


It happens when you're paying attention

by alterocentrist



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: Developing Friendships, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24068737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alterocentrist/pseuds/alterocentrist
Summary: Ellie and Aster find their worlds need to get bigger before they can make them small again.Set just about immediately afterThe Half of It. The title is from "Rescued" by Jack's Mannequin.
Relationships: Ellie Chu & Aster Flores, Ellie Chu & Aster Flores & Paul Munsky, Ellie Chu/Aster Flores
Comments: 91
Kudos: 538





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't stop thinking about these two kids (three, including Paul), so I needed to write about them. Simple as that. Thanks, Alice Wu. No thoughts, head empty. I will update chapters as soon as I finish the chapter that comes after it. Comment with your thoughts, I'd love to hear from you.

It was Ellie’s tenth day at Grinnell when she made a big decision: she was going to buy a bike. 

She didn’t think she would miss her bike. It was more of a necessity than something she enjoyed. They used to have a car, but it ended up in the scrap heap when Ellie was fifteen, and her dad never mentioned if he ever thought of getting another one. Anyway, cycling in Squahamish was such a gamble. Everything was a hazard, all of the time. If the melted snow on the roads didn’t threaten to wipe you out, the bros in their egregious pickup trucks sure would. And then there was that damn hill she rode up every day, just to get home from town and school.

There was none of that at Grinnell. Compared to Squahamish, Grinnell was flat. The college was situated in the north of town, which was organised sensibly, in a grid. Squahamish was technically on a grid, but looking on a map, it looked like a half-hearted attempt at one, as roads were inevitably built on the town’s hilly contours, causing roads to snake where they should have been straight. The relative flatness, and the ease of navigation, meant that the people in Grinnell loved to cycle. Or the students did, anyway.

Over dinner, during her ninth evening in Grinnell, Ellie asked Joyce, a junior she had spotted chaining her bike up outside the library, where the best bike shop in town was. That was how Ellie ended up at a shop that smelled like coffee and grease, asking the person behind the counter if they had any used bikes.

Unlike the lone, part-time bike mechanic in Squahamish, the lanky, bearded white man smiled at Ellie. An earnest smile, without his eyes widening or his lips twitching at the sight of her. “Sure, what are you after?” he asked.

Ellie thought of her bike in Squahamish. She found it, rusty and abandoned, at the back of the station building, not long after her mother died. Ellie had been too short for the bike then, but she took it in, like one takes in a stray animal, and she looked after it. She cleaned it, pumped up the tires, greased the chain, examined what new parts were needed and sought these out from the aforementioned bike mechanic, who actually worked out of a small shop that sold hunting and fishing gear. Ellie finally grew into the bike after a sudden growth spurt in her sophomore year of high school. Unfortunately, she hadn’t grown much since then.

“Just something to get around,” she said, shrugging in response.

The man walked to the other side of the counter. He was looking at Ellie, as if sizing her up. “You a freshman at Grinnell?” he asked.

Ellie nodded.

The man jerked his head and began walking through the aisles of bikes, only glancing once to see if Ellie was following him. “Welcome to town! How are you finding it?” he asked.

“Uh, good,” Ellie said.

“I swear, dozens of you come through here every year, all shy and looking for a bike,” the man told her. “It’s great. It _is_ the best way to get around Grinnell. Where are you from? You ridden before?”

“I’m from Washington. State,” Ellie clarified. “And I used to ride back home.” Just behind the man, she spotted a bike, a very dark purple with peculiar neon green accents on the crossbar and the handlebars.

The man followed her line of sight. “You like that one? The girl who sold it to us graduated in the summer. Bet you she got it from here too. I don’t know, I wasn’t around then. But that’s how it goes around here, you know, you college kids get your bikes, use them well, pass ‘em on to the next one.” He walked over to the bike, examining it, then looked at Ellie. “You were about the same height too, give or take,” he remarked. He pulled the bike out into the aisle so Ellie could have a better look. It had a grey saddle, more of the neon green on the wheel spokes, mudguards in the same shade of purple, and a rack on the rear wheel. Ellie could see herself mounting another plastic crate on it already.

“I can only spend a hundred bucks,” Ellie told him.

“Can you do a hundred fifty? I’ll throw in a helmet and a lock for you,” the man said.

“Hundred twenty,” Ellie said. She didn’t know if she was in a position to be bargaining, but her work-study job didn’t start until next week and she was using money from her savings, not wanting to touch the little bit of money her parents had put aside for her until she really had to.

The man crossed his arms. He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, then his face broke into a smile. “I’m good with that,” he said. “Come on, let’s go pick out a nice, bright helmet for you.” He led Ellie to the other end of the store, to a shelf of helmets.

Fifteen minutes later, after the helmet—a shiny white with turquoise straps—was fitted, the tires were pumped, the chain was greased, and the saddle was adjusted, Ellie rode back to campus on her bike. She parked it outside her dorm at Norris Hall. Helmet tucked under her arm, her face tingly from the wind, she went up to her room. Her roommate was out, presumably in class. Ellie wasn’t familiar with her schedule yet.

Ellie took off her shoes and plopped down on her bed, on top of the covers. Her entire body was buzzing from the physical activity. She pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket and made her second big decision of the day.

She decided to message Aster Flores back.

On her sixth day at Grinnell, Ellie’s phone had pinged to a notification.

 _Hi Ellie, Aster Flores here. I got your number from Paul,_ Aster had written. _He probably already told you. I hope that’s okay. Are you having a good time at Grinnell so far? It would be nice to hear from you… Aster x_

Ellie read the message exactly three more times before she had the sense of what she wanted to write back. She began to type _Hey Aster_ , before realising that this was the first time she was going to write Aster as herself. Not as Paul, not as SmithCorona, but as _Ellie_. It should be easier. It shouldn’t be the kind of nerve-wracking that involved a four-day delay.

_Hey Aster. Grinnell is great. Classes started two days ago and I didn’t realise how much assigned reading actually involves. Anyway, how are you? Are you at art school already?_

She wanted to write more, maybe talk about how Squahamish seemed like a world away, but it didn’t feel right. If they were still SmithCorona and DiegaRivero, perhaps. But they weren’t anymore. They were just Ellie Chu and Aster Flores. And it didn’t feel like they were _there_ yet.

* * *

It had been in the middle of some inter-dorm, freshman team-building activity—was it the team improv competition or the scavenger hunt?—when Ellie received Aster’s message. She was distracted for a good few seconds, enough that the other kids had to ask her if she was okay. She had dismissed their concerns and didn’t look at her phone again until the activity was over. The first person she texted was Paul.

 _WTF dude?_ she wrote. _You gave Aster my number?_

 _Sorry_ , Paul wrote back straight away, followed by a message with exactly three emojis: a waffle, prayer hands, and a smiling, cartoon shiba inu.

 _WTF!_ Ellie replied. Her screen abruptly came to life, telling her that Paul was calling. She jabbed at the green button. “You gave my Aster my number?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry, I thought you’d appreciate it!” Paul said, his voice earnest and true, in the way that made Ellie smile, despite herself. “You deserve other friends from home besides me, and you and Aster have a lot in common, so when she asked, I thought it was a great idea if you two continued talking.”

“ _Wait_ , she asked for my number?”

“Yeah, she texted me, she said she wanted to get in touch with you,” Paul said. “Isn’t that nice? She’s so nice. You told me you guys talked, right? Just before you left.”

Ellie cleared her throat. “Yeah, totally, we just had a talk,” she said.

“And?” The suggestion in Paul’s voice didn’t go amiss.

“She’s not like that, Paul. She doesn’t see me that way,” Ellie said.

“Oh.” The thing with Paul was that his voice betrayed his every emotion. Ellie liked this about him, though she didn’t envy it. “Bright side, though, she obviously still wants to be friends with you. You should just, I don’t know, embrace it, Ellie… You can’t always be texting dumb old me all the time.”

“Paul, you are _not_ dumb. I heard that five-spice sausage has been selling out fast at your family’s shop,” Ellie said. “Also, my dad was telling me that you and him went down to the Asian grocery store last weekend.”

“Well, I needed to restock on five-spice and soy sauce. I’m trying to experiment with ways to dehydrate the soy sauce so the sausage would be a bit drier,” Paul said. Ellie could almost hear him shrugging. “Look, I gotta go, I promised my mom I’d work out the exact bulk measurements for the recipe by today, so we can up our production.”

“Sounds awesome,” Ellie said, smiling, proud of her friend. “I’ll let you get back to work, then.”

“Don’t forget to reply to Aster, all right?”

“What?”

“I know you. You’d read that message over and over again but you’d just leave her on seen,” Paul said.

“I would _not_ ,” Ellie said.

“Sure,” Paul said. “Bye, Ellie.”

“Bye, Paul.” Ellie hung up. She leaned back on the bench she was sitting on and looked up at the blue sky. There had not been one overcast day since she arrived in Grinnell.

Of course, Paul was right. She read Aster’s message every night, before she went to bed, but she didn’t dare reply.

* * *

Ellie purposely left her phone in her dorm when she went to the dining hall for dinner. When she returned later that evening, she saw that Aster had sent two messages. The first: _Pfft. Reading shouldn’t be a problem for you. You probably did crazy amounts of reading at school because of your “business”. Nothing your big brain can’t handle._ There was a wink face emoji at the end of that message. The second message read: _I’m at MassArt, btw, in Boston. Just moved into my dorm yesterday. Classes start next week. It’s all a bit surreal._

 _Boston. That’s cool. You’re even further east than me. How is art school surreal? Isn’t that what you wanted?_ Ellie asked her. She stared at her phone, wondering if Aster would respond straight away, but she must already be sleeping, or close to it. Even after Ellie had gotten ready for bed, and tucked herself in, Aster still hadn’t replied. Ellie tried to forget about it and focused on reading her book before going to sleep.

When she woke up, at the beginning of her eleventh day at Grinnell, she checked her phone. One new message.

_It’s surreal because it’s exactly what I wanted._

Ellie squeezed the bridge of her nose before reaching for her glasses. She saw that the messages were still showing up from an unknown number, and that she hadn’t added Aster to her contacts yet. She pressed the option to create a new contact and carefully typed _Aster Flores_.

* * *

Mrs G talked to Ellie about Grinnell a lot back at school, but she didn’t mention what the student population was like at all. Maybe it had been different in her day. A Google search told Ellie that Grinnell was particularly diverse, especially for a small, rural liberal arts college in the midwest. However, this research did not prepare her for the reality that for the first time in her life, Ellie lived somewhere where there were other Chinese people. There were a mix of students from other Asian backgrounds, too. There were also other people of colour, _more_ people of colour than she had ever encountered in Squahamish. Furthermore, a good chunk of the students were from overseas. The college had 1700 students in a town with a total population of 9000, and yet, to Ellie, it felt like the whole world had opened up to her.

Her first semester classes were a mishmash of whatever interested her out of the catalogue. Grinnell was fortunately flexible that way. She took a literary analysis class, and intro to sociology, and then a calculus class, just to stretch her mind a bit. Her fourth class was Grinnell’s compulsory First-Year Tutorial, which was assigned to her out of the five preferences she indicated. Her First-Year Tutorial class topic was simply called “Jesus”.

* * *

“Wait, like _Jesus_ Jesus?” Paul asked over video chat one night. His face took up Ellie’s laptop screen, while Ellie sat on her bed and folded laundry on a Wednesday afternoon. This had become a bit of a ritual for them.

“The Lord and Saviour himself,” Ellie said.

“I didn’t expect that you’d choose that.”

“And why not?”

Paul shrugged. He kneaded his brow with a knuckle. “You said you didn’t really believe in all that,” he said. “Like Jesus and God and all.”

“I’m not sure about God.” Ellie tossed a folded t-shirt on top of her t-shirt pile, on the other end of her bed. “But I believe that Jesus was a real person who actually existed way back when,” she said.

“You do?” Paul asked.

“Of course I do. Besides, in my four years of playing at the Sunday services, it’s not like I didn’t get curious about a few things,” Ellie said.

“I get that. Being around something enough that you get curious about it, but you don’t have to actually, like, believe in it,” Paul said. “You get that choice.” He was nodding, mostly to himself. “That’s nice.”

“It is nice,” Ellie agreed.

* * *

It turned out that growing up in a tiny apartment above a train station prepared Ellie for dorm life. Some things were similar: the bathroom was often untidy, the rooms were cramped, and the food, though tasty and filling, started to become repetitive as the months went by.

Life fell into a rhythm for Ellie. She was in class twice a day, sometimes three times. She worked four-hour shifts, two days a week, at one of the campus cafes, where she worked the cashier and learned how to make lattes and cappuccinos. She studied for at least an hour in the library most days, after work or class, except for Wednesdays, when she did laundry in the afternoons and talked to Paul, and on Sundays, when she would cycle into town, sometimes with a bunch of people, before calling her dad in the evenings.

She was having fun, too. For the first time in her life, she had friends. Several of them. She hung out with different sets of people from her classes, just out on the grounds or in one of the dining halls. She got to know her roommate, Hazel, who moved to Grinnell from Singapore to study chemistry. Hazel was Chinese, too, but with an entirely different set of experiences from Ellie, having grown up upper-middle class in a tropical, urban jungle, and they bonded over what they shared, and threatened to clash over what they didn’t.

The kids at Grinnell were frustrating in a different way to the kids back in Squahamish. Most of them came from families that were more well-to-do than Ellie’s, judging by their clothes and the way they freely spent money on lattes every day, sometimes even twice a day. They would drop their iPhones in the dorm toilets and be able to buy a new one that same afternoon. They would fill their plates at the dining hall buffets but end up throwing away half of what they put on there. The only kid like that back home was Trig Carson. At Grinnell, there were hundreds of them. But they weren’t oblivious like Trig, nor were they wilfully bragging about their money. They were just _confident_. Having parents that you could text simply to ask for “a bit more allowance” just to have extra coffee or pizza money was a level of confidence and security that Ellie couldn’t even comprehend.

After putting someone’s half-eaten brownie—three dollars fifty, served with a dollop of cream—into the bin, Ellie took advantage of a quiet moment in the cafe to process the irritation she felt when she saw that. On impulse, she pulled out her phone and typed _Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be the kind of person who’d spend money on food then just NOT finish it?_ She pressed send.

Aster’s response came through right away. _Not even ask for a takeout container for it?_

Ellie thought of the always-abundant stack of returnable plastic containers that the dining halls offered for people’s unfinished meals. _Nope_ , she replied.

 _If I ever thought of doing that when my parents weren’t around, I’d hear their voices in my head_ , Aster wrote. The telltale ellipsis flicked on Ellie’s phone screen, and then another message appeared: _Can I call you later?_

Ellie asked her what time.

* * *

Even if that line of communication had been open, it didn’t mean that they were suddenly chatting all the time. They messaged each other _enough_ , but Ellie still messaged Paul and her Grinnell friends more than she messaged Aster. A call was definitely a big step up.

After work and a quick visit to the library to pick up books, Ellie cycled to her dorm, and practically ran up to her room. The last message from Aster was: _You work_ ? And Ellie had replied, _Can’t exactly continue my business from home over here_. Aster sent her an emoji that approximated a wicked laugh.

Ellie’s dorm room was empty. She put her bag on the floor and tossed her jacket and helmet aside before sitting down on her bed. She texted Aster to tell her that she was ready. She watched her screen, waiting for Aster to call. Her phone started to ring, and she jabbed at the screen instantaneously. She held her phone to her ear. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Even from miles away, through Norris Hall’s less-than-ideal wifi connection, Aster’s voice sounded as rich as it did the day they last spoke in Squahamish. After an awkward pause, she continued: “Seen any tornadoes yet in Iowa?”

“I missed the worst of the season,” Ellie said. “There have been a couple of storms, though.”

“Like the ones back in Squahamish?” Aster asked.

“Not quite,” Ellie said. The storms back home were ugly and had a nebulous quality to them. The winds would whistle and the skies would open, but no one would be able to tell where the storm ended or began. At Grinnell, the storms were distinct monsters, hovering over the horizon as they approached, thick purple-grey clouds scarred with flashes of lightning.

“You think Iowa will make a storm chaser out of you?” Aster teased.

“Why do people talk about the weather all the time?” Ellie asked.

Aster hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t know.”

“They don’t have anything better to talk about?” Ellie suggested.

“ _We’re_ talking about the weather right now,” Aster said.

“I didn’t mean us.”

“Then who did you mean?” Aster asked. When Ellie didn’t answer, she threw out an idea: “Maybe it’s because humans like talking about things bigger than ourselves.”

“Like God, you mean,” Ellie said.

Aster laughed. “Paul told me you’re taking a Jesus class,” she said.

Ellie’s eyes widened. “You talk to Paul?” He hadn’t said anything about Aster.

“Yeah, now and then, just to check in. He’s a good guy, and he’s really funny now that he’s stopped trying so hard,” Aster said. “Anyway, I asked him if he meant theology or religious studies, but he said that the class was literally called ‘Jesus.’”

“It _is_ literally called ‘Jesus,’” Ellie said.

“So, what have you learned so far?” Aster asked.

“Did you know that there’s a Chinese Jesus? An Indian Jesus? And different versions of African Jesuses?”

Aster laughed. “We have pictures of Latino Jesus and Mary at home,” she said.

“My mind was blown, to be honest,” Ellie said.

“I find that hard to believe,” Aster said. “You know so many things.”

“I know things that I care to know about,” Ellie told her. “All that talk of God and Jesus back home, that just confused me… With everything else that was going on, I think it was easier for me to just take people’s word for it.” She took a deep breath. “You know, the idea of Jesus felt a lot closer when I saw him as someone who kinda looked like me.”

Aster chuckled. “That’s the whole point, I think.”

“I know,” Ellie said softly. “So, tell me about Boston.”

By the time Aster had told her about Boston, about MassArt, and by the time they had swapped enough stories back and forth about the weird and wonderful things about their respective classmates and professors, nearly two hours had passed. Ellie was stretched out on her bed, and she had missed her usual dinner time. So did Aster, and it was an hour ahead in Boston. Ellie apologised profusely.

“It’s okay, I think I can borrow a noodle cup from my roommate. I’ll just buy her another one,” Aster said. “It was nice talking to you tonight, Ellie.”

Ellie felt irritated at the thought that she had talked so much that Aster was left with nothing but cup noodles for dinner. She scratched the back of her neck. “Ah, yeah, it was nice talking to you too,” she said. “Will you be coming home for Thanksgiving?”

“No, but my family usually goes to Sacramento for Thanksgiving anyway,” Aster told her. This was something Ellie hadn't noticed, until she remembered that a visiting priest always did the service the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

“Oh, I’m not coming home either,” Ellie said. They couldn’t afford it, and they didn’t do anything anyway, not since her mother died. “Christmas, then.”

“Yeah, Christmas,” Aster said. “Good night, Ellie.”

“Night, Aster.” Ellie ended the call. She got up, hastily redid her ponytail, and moved to put on her shoes and jacket so that she could go to the dining hall.

* * *

Most of Grinnell’s students stayed over Thanksgiving break, so the college sent out an email to all students, announcing that they would be serving a traditional Thanksgiving lunch at the dining hall. The evening before, Ellie’s roommate Hazel was buzzing with excitement about her “first American holiday”. She tried on outfits in front of Ellie, wondering which one made her look the most Thanksgiving-appropriate.

Ellie didn’t want to tell her that she had no idea. When her mom was still alive, she would whip up the closest approximation of an American Thanksgiving dinner: crispy roasted chicken, braised bok choy, served with white rice, with a side of chicken and corn soup. Ellie had never had a Thanksgiving meal the way her classmates in Squahamish would have, and even when her dad was widowed and Ellie was left motherless, nobody in town had invited the Chus to spend the holiday with them.

“Well, what are you wearing?” Hazel asked.

“Uh, nothing special,” Ellie said.

“Not your usual clothes, surely,” Hazel said, her nose slightly upturned.

“I don’t have any other clothes,” Ellie said, not even bothering to be defensive about Hazel’s comment about her wardrobe. She came to Grinnell with a backpack of books, a duffel of clothes and beddings, and a cooler of dumplings. She had brought all of her clothes with her, with a few additions from a thrift store in Tukwila, where Paul had insisted on taking her, even if it was a five-hour round trip, so that she could look more “college-ready”. This was in contrast to Hazel, who arrived the afternoon after Ellie did, wheeling in a suitcase that threatened to be nearly as tall as her, and she was already shorter than Ellie.

The outfit she had chosen for Thanksgiving consisted of a pair of dark brown chinos and a maroon wool sweater that she had found at the Tukwila thrift store. Paul had been the one to pick out the sweater. Under the sweater, Ellie planned on wearing the white button-down shirt, the one that Paul had chosen for her to wear for the senior recital. She was going to wear these with a pair of leather boots she had found at the Goodwill in Wenatchee and had them resoled, the day after she kissed Aster. Ellie practically lived in the boots since it had started getting colder.

“Have you tried wearing a blazer?” Hazel asked. “I think I’ve got one I could lend you.”

Ellie politely declined.

Later, when they were both in bed, and Hazel was busy watching Netflix on her laptop with her headphones on, Ellie sent Paul a photo of a blazer from the Gap’s website, something Hazel would wear an expensive version of. _You think I’d look good in one of these?_ she wrote, before putting her phone down to continue reading her book.

She didn’t read Paul’s messages until she finished her chapter.

 _I don’t think it’s you. Maybe something like this?_ It was followed by a photo of another blazer, but this time, more masculine, made of some heavier fabric, like wool or tweed. And then another message: _If I find one at the Goodwill, I’ll definitely get it for you_. This was punctuated by the caterpillar with glasses emoji.

* * *

The semester finished and Ellie surprised herself with how much she was looking forward to going back to Squahamish. She was going to take the university's shuttle bus to Des Moines, then from there, fly to Seattle, and then from there, she would take the Amtrak from King Street Station directly home. Literally. She had explained her journey to Hazel, whose eyes bugged out upon discovering that Ellie _literally_ lived at the train station. It made Ellie laugh.

The morning after her last exam, Ellie boarded the first bus to Des Moines. By the end of the day, and three hours behind, she was on the train, slowing as it approached Squahamish Station. It was already dark, but she could see that most of the trees were bare, and the mountains were dusted with snow.

The train stopped, and Ellie gathered her things and got off onto the platform, where she was greeted by the beaming faces of Paul and her father.

“Ellie! Welcome home!” Paul exclaimed, his words coming out as white puffs of vapour. He was wearing his brown winter jacket with the shearling lined hood, the one that made his mousy hair look slightly ginger. Unlike some of the guys who graduated school but stayed in Squahamish, he made no effort to grow a beard or let his hair grow long. He looked as wholesome as the day he ran after Ellie’s train last August.

Ellie’s dad looked well, too. He hadn’t said anything yet, but there was a mischievous energy about him, and the dark cloud that used to settle around his shoulders seemed to have lifted. He was wearing a down jacket, in a simple black, and his hood was up, to cover his ears. He never quite adjusted to the Squahamish climate.

“Come on, have you had anything to eat yet?” Paul took Ellie’s bags from her and easily hoisted them on his shoulders. “We made your favourite.”

It was bizarre to hear those words in English, from Paul. “Braised pork?” she asked.

“Of course,” her dad said, in English as well.

As the train pulled away, the three of them made their way upstairs to the Chus apartment, where the aromas of braised pork and jasmine rice wafted through the air, and through Ellie’s nostrils. Her dad shut the door behind her, and Ellie found that she had to stop in the tiny living room to watch him and Paul shed their shoes and jackets before they headed to the kitchen to serve up the food. She realised that she was so, _so_ lucky.

* * *

Paul spent Christmas Eve with them, where the three of them made soup and dumplings together and ate them in front of the TV. On Christmas Day, Ellie and her father were invited to the Munskys Christmas lunch, which was as chaotic as expected. Ellie had thought that the morning Christmas service at church would have mellowed the Munskys, but they were as loud and combative as ever. Ellie felt overwhelmed by it all, but her dad seemed to enjoy himself, even managing a conversation with Paul’s dad, also a quiet man, by Munsky standards.

Ellie and Paul sat in a corner of the living room by themselves, huddled over plates of food.

“I wanted to tell you, I’m moving to Wenatchee in the summer,” Paul said.

“By yourself?” Ellie asked.

Paul nodded. “A butcher there tried my taco sausage, and then we met up and I got him trying my new recipes. He said he wanted to offer me an apprenticeship,” he said. “It’s minimum wage, but I’ll also be getting free board, so it’s a decent gig, I think.”

“You don’t think he’s just trying to poach the Munsky brats recipe?”

“That’s exactly what my mom said, but he’s not interested in the recipes,” Paul said, chuckling. “He just said that my sausages would be better if I had a better understanding of pork.”

“What about college?” Ellie asked. Paul had taken the year off to work full-time at the family business while he figured out his future plans.

“I thought I’d take some accounting classes at the community college there. It was the butcher’s suggestion,” Paul said. “Learn how to do the books, and stuff.” He glanced over at the dining table, where his older brothers were eating. “Someone’s gotta do it one day. I’ll get my associates, and I’ll be a butcher… You know we don’t butcher the pigs, right? We pay someone else to do it.”

“Expanding and diversifying, cutting out an intermediary,” Ellie said, nodding. “I like it.”

Paul smiled through a mouthful of mashed potato. “I knew you would.”

After a second helping of dessert, Ellie stepped out to get some fresh air. Paul didn’t even notice, as he was in the middle of a heated discussion with his brothers about car upholstery. Standing in front of the Munsky’s house, Ellie checked her phone. There were three unread messages, all from Aster.

 _Merry Christmas!_ with an emoji of a Christmas tree.

_I overhead Paul and his mom at church this morning talking about how you and your dad were having lunch with them. That must be so exciting! We all know the Munskys are a wild bunch. Good luck to you both!_

And then the third message: _Btw, do you want to hang out sometime over break? I can come and pick you up._

Ellie dropped her phone back in her pocket and warmed her hands by rubbing them together, before fishing her phone out again so she could type a response: _Hi Aster, merry Christmas_ , she began. _Yes, the Munskys are wild but I think we’re going to live to tell the tale_ . Ellie exhaled loudly as she continued typing: _I’d love_ … She stopped. “Love?” she muttered to herself. That word was explosive. She jabbed the backspace key. _Hanging out would be cool_ . It sounded stilted, and it sounded like something that Paul would write, but Ellie kept it and continued. _I”m free anytime. Let me know when you are._

She pressed send.

* * *

Two days later, Aster’s yellow hatchback parked in front of the station, while Ellie was sweeping the front of the station.

Ellie tried to focus on the last of her sweeping as Aster emerged from the car, but she couldn’t help watching. Aster was in jeans, boots, and a coat in an eerily similar shade of purple to Ellie’s bike at Grinnell. Her scarf, beanie, and fingerless gloves were varying shades of grey. Her hair was loose under her beanie, falling over her shoulders in waves. She grinned at Ellie, without any hint of self-consciousness.

“You ready?” she asked.

Ellie leaned against her broom. “You’re early.” Aster was a full twenty minutes early.

“Tardiness is really bad form,” Aster said, and then she chuckled. “Also... my family has been on this really long video chat with our relatives in Sacramento, so I just had to make excuses to get out of there.”

“I need to get changed,” Ellie said.

Aster’s eyes glinted. “You don’t need to,” she teased.

“Really?” Ellie gestured incredulously at her sweatpants and ratty sneakers. She went on with her sweeping. When she finished, she turned to Aster. “Wanna come upstairs and meet my dad?”

For a second, Aster’s eyes widened, seemingly taken aback. “Uh, sure,” she said.

“Come on.” Broom and dustpan in hand, Ellie headed upstairs, with Aster following her. She rested the broom and dustpan on the wall at the landing on top of the stairs, then toed her shoes off before entering through the ajar door of the apartment, watching as Aster did the same.

Ellie’s dad was sitting on his armchair, as usual. However, gone were the days of his bathrobes. He was dressed in a half-zip sweater and chinos, but he was still wearing his fuzzy slippers. He smiled up at Ellie, then his head tilted curiously upon spotting Aster behind her. “Hello,” he said confidently. Ellie was secretly proud that his time with Paul had made her dad less hesitant about speaking in English.

“Hi, Mister Chu,” Aster said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Ellie’s dad echoed.

“Dad, this is Aster, she’s a, uh,” Ellie cleared her throat, “we went to high school together.”

“Hi,” Aster said again.

“Aster and I are hanging out today, Dad,” Ellie said. She switched to Mandarin, not caring if Aster minded, or perhaps she was sure that she wouldn’t mind at all. “I need to change clothes. She’ll wait here with you… Be nice!” She turned to Aster, automatically switching to English again. “One sec.” She walked off to her room and shut the door. She slipped out of her sweatpants and pulled on a pair of jeans, light wash and straight cut, the way she liked them. She shrugged out of her jacket and looked at the mirror to examine the flannel she was wearing over her thermal shirt. She sniffed it. It smelled like ginger and garlic, from when she was cooking the night before. Quickly, she unbuttoned it and tossed it in the hamper. She picked up her maroon sweater from a pile of clothes on her desk. She was pulling that over her head when her door swung open.

“That’s a nice colour.”

Ellie got her head through the sweater and she adjusted it over her body. “Uh, thanks,” she said. “Paul picked it out, actually.”

Aster smiled. “You go shopping with Paul?”

“I guess I do,” Ellie said.

“He’s got good taste,” Aster said.

“I guess he does.” Ellie looked down at the sweater. It must have been from the men’s section, but it fit like it was made for her. She liked the slight speckling of black throughout the maroon, and ribbing on the torso. She pulled her jacket back on, checked for her phone and wallet. “Let’s go?”

Aster nodded. Together, they said goodbye to Ellie’s dad, and then they got into Aster’s car. 

They drove along silently for a while, and Ellie didn’t have any idea where they were going. She looked at the dirty snow piled up on the side of the road. It had apparently fallen two days before she arrived home. “Was it snowing in Boston when you left?” Ellie asked.

“Ellie.” Aster drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “You’re talking about the weather again.”

The truth was that Ellie didn’t know what to talk to Aster about. Or, rather, she knew what she was capable of talking to Aster about, but she didn’t dare go there yet. They messaged each other sparsely but regularly, and called each other every couple of weeks or so, but being in the car, in close proximity to each other, _in person_ , was different. It _shouldn’t_ be different, but it was. “Well,” she shrugged, “I’m trying to figure out if we’re going to the hot spring again.”

“It’s _forty_ degrees,” Aster said.

“Now who’s talking about the weather?”

Aster huffed. “You started it,” she said. “No, we’re going somewhere else. I don’t care how hot that spring gets, I don’t go in it in the winter.”

“Another secret place?” Ellie asked. She found that she asked a lot of questions around Aster.

“Sure, something like that,” Aster said.

“You’ve got lots of secret places, it seems,” Ellie said.

Aster’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel again. “We all have our places to get away, to keep the rest of the world out,” she said. “Like your ticket booth.”

“No longer my ticket booth,” Ellie corrected her.

“I’m sure it still feels like yours whenever you look at it,” Aster said. And she was right. After about another ten minutes of driving, Aster pulled over at the side of the road, next to a field overrun with bushes and tall grass. She killed her car engine, then looked at Ellie. “You warm enough?” she asked.

Ellie understood that they were going to leave the warmth of the car. She started pulling her gloves on, and zipped her jacket all the way up. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m wearing long underwear.”

Aster laughed. “I expected that.” She got out of the car and Ellie followed suit. They wandered as far as they could into the field. The ground was that odd, half-slushy combination of earth and snow that went through a cycle of freezing and thawing until the spring. It occasionally squelched under their boots. The grass reached as high as their hips. “This used to be a farm, apparently, but the owners died, and their children, who had moved into the city, got the house demolished and intended to sell the land.”

“What happened?” Ellie asked.

“Nobody wanted to buy land out here. Eventually the county bought it from them, at a much cheaper price. The story was that they were intending to build a community centre here, maybe a strip mall on the side, but you know…” Aster trailed off and shrugged. “So this just grew wild.”

“Do you just, stand here and hope the snakes don’t get you?”

Aster laughed. “I’m hardly ever in here at all, precisely for that reason,” she said. She marched out towards the car, then made a show of climbing onto the hood, and reclining against her windshield. She tapped the space next to her. “Come on.”

Ellie climbed onto the hood, too. It was hot under her jeans.

“I sit here and read books, and listen to music, usually in the late summer or the autumn, when it’s not too hot,” Aster told her. “I like thinking about the farm that this used to be, you know…Like, that idea that if you leave something long enough -”

“It’ll grow on its own,” Ellie finished.

Aster looked at her. “Yeah.” She bent her left knee so that she could fiddle with the cuff of her boot. “It’s weird, Ellie. I want to get to know you but I forget that I already do, somewhat,” she said. “I think about it, and you didn’t even really make an effort to hide yourself, you know? You may have used Paul’s name, but you were just writing as you, not as him. If you were really writing from his point of view, you’d have tried harder.”

Ellie didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know how to explain the initial thrill of discovering that Aster Flores, who she thought was the most beautiful, most unattainable girl in her class, was someone who actually operated on the same wavelength as her. She didn’t know how to excuse the fact that she kept up a lie because she discovered that she had been craving that connection all her life. Especially when she realised that Aster was craving it, too.

As if Aster had been reading her mind, she said: “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“I don’t?” Ellie asked, eyes wide.

“We can be friends now.” Aster frowned, before correcting herself. “We _are_ friends now.” She stretched her leg out and rested her head back on the windshield, so that she was looking up at the overcast sky. “I don’t know if I already told you this, but since I’ve been back in Squahamish, I notice how a lot of the kids at MassArt dress like small town people. Like Carhartts and boots and work pants.”

“At Grinnell, too. Except their boots cost like, three hundred bucks, and their work pants are tailored,” Ellie said.

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” Aster said. “It’s not a good feeling.”

“My roommate lowkey thinks I’m a slob, but she’s a little bit of a fashionista,” Ellie said. “I think she even has one of those Instagram accounts just for her outfits.”

Aster rolled her eyes. “Oh man, I can imagine,” she said. “My roommate’s boyfriend wears t-shirts with holes in them on _purpose_ . I asked him about it and he very kindly explained to me that they were from this clothing line. I looked it up. That t-shirt cost a hundred and seventy-five dollars. _Holes_ included.” She began to laugh.

Ellie did, too. She liked that Aster was also keenly attuned to how many of their classmates, though well-meaning, seemed to be ignorant of their own privilege. 

“Do you ever think that we’ll finally end up in places where we won’t feel so left out?” Aster asked.

“Sometimes I wish for that, but the more I think about it, I hope not,” Ellie said.

Aster frowned. "Why not?”

“Well, then how are we supposed to know the difference?" Ellie countered easily.

Aster's eyes widened. And then she began to nod. This was how Ellie knew that Aster understood her perfectly.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a “requirement” of her father’s that if Aster was to live on the other side of the country, then she was to attend mass, and then Sunday lunch, with her Tio Matthew and his family. Tio Matthew was his mother’s second cousin, and the only family they had living in Boston. In his late thirties, he was younger than her parents, and worked in IT support for a company in the city. His wife worked as a secretary at the local high school. They had three kids, close together in age.

Aster had heard of Tio Matthew, but had never met him until her whole family made the trip to Boston to “drop her off” at MassArt. Like her relatives on her mom’s side of the family, his skin was brown, darker than Aster’s. He was almost always in short-sleeved collared shirts tucked into chinos, which emphasised his stocky physique. His family was lovely and welcoming. Aster found that any awkwardness melted away by her second Sunday with them. It didn’t even matter that her dad insisted on establishing the long-distant family connection just as a way of checking up on her.

MassArt was closed over spring break. Aster couldn’t afford to go home so soon after Christmas, so it was arranged that she was going to stay at Tio Matthew’s house for the week. As soon as her classes finished, Aster packed her bags and took the subway to her uncle’s neighbourhood.

Tio Matthew, and his wife, Tia Julia, were both home when she arrived. Aster stood in their living room with her bags, expecting to be told that she would be sharing rooms with one of the kids. She would not have minded sharing a room with their eldest, the precocious middle schooler Sylvia, who idolised her.

Instead, her uncle and aunt led her back outside, and then she followed them around the side of the house, where there was a door. Tio Matthew handed her two keys on a ring. “Unlock it,” he told her, smiling. Aster did, and the door opened into a small living space, furnished with a two-seater couch and a coffee table. There was a kitchenette, with a two-burner cooktop and a microwave. The stools on the breakfast counter looked new.

“The bedroom’s down there. I’ll bring you the sheets so you can put them on yourself,” Tia Julia said. “And there’s a bathroom right next to it.”

Aster couldn’t quite process what was going on. “What’s this?” she asked.

“We’ve been renting this out to a med student until last summer, when she graduated,” Tia Julia said. “We thought you could stay here for spring break, give it a test drive.”

“Test drive?” Aster asked.

“We spoke to your parents, and we told them it may work out better for you to stay here than to pay for campus accommodation next year,” Tio Matthew explained. “You know, having a place of your own, not having to share the bathroom, you can cook your own meals… or come upstairs and eat with us…”

“I mean, it’ll be a bit of a commute to get to school, but again, it’s your own place,” Tia Julia said.

“It’ll be cheaper, too,” Aster realised. She had covered most of her MassArt fees through financial aid, a combination of scholarships, and a generous grant from the Catholic diocese back in Washington, but it didn’t make on-campus accommodation less eye-wateringly costly. She looked around the place. From here, school was half an hour away on the subway. “This is awesome.”

“We thought you’d like it,” Tia Julia said. “Of course, it’s up to you if you want to stay here next year.”

“Hence, test drive,” Tio Matthew added, perhaps unnecessarily.

“I think…” Aster exhaled. “I think I’ll take it.” She looked at her uncle and aunt’s smiling faces. “Thank you,” she said to them. “Thank you so much.” She intended to thank them again, but her words were swallowed as they moved in to embrace her. 

* * *

Back in her elementary school in Sacramento, she had a good number of Latino classmates, but none of them were Puerto Rican, unless they happened to be one of her cousins. There were three other Puerto Ricans in Squahamish: her dad, her mom, and her younger sister. In Boston, Aster was one of some thirty-thousand. She looked it up and it had the eighth-highest population of Puerto Ricans in the country. They were the largest group of Latinos at MassArt. They even had a student association. It made Aster feel heart-clenchingly warm, being around people who grew up with an identity and a relationship to America that was built on possession, not belonging.

Aster always thought of herself as a well-read person. A  _ cultured _ person, even. Throughout high school, she had never met anyone who read translated novels, or watched foreign-language films. She didn’t think it made her a  _ better _ person, necessarily, but she always thought it made her more open, more hungry, to discovering life beyond Squahamish. 

At MassArt, she quickly found that she was out of her depth, especially among the Puerto Ricans and the other Latino students at school. They teased her, good-naturedly, for only reading western authors, and sent her back to her dorm room with their well-thumbed copies of books by Esmeralda Santiago, Sandra Cisneros, and Gloria Anzaldua, among others. Aster read them all, then did her research and hunted more books down at the library. It was as if she was stepping into a new world without realising that she already had one foot in it all this time.

_ You know what’s embarrassing?  _ she wrote in a message to Ellie, not long after they had returned to their respective colleges after Christmas break.  _ Realising that I graduated high school only having ever read ONE (1) writer of colour outside of the high school English syllabus.  _ She was referring, of course, to Kazuo Ishiguro.

_ We only did ONE (1) writer of colour in the whole English syllabus. Maya Angelou _ , Ellie replied.

Aster sent her a facepalm emoji. It was the blonde woman, the one she always used. The emojis that looked like people of colour came out when Aster was in sophomore year in Squahamish, but she didn’t want to know how her friends would react if she sent them an emoji that actually resembled her, instead of one that resembled them.

_ I know how you feel, though. We’re reading this graphic novel in one of my lit class. American Born Chinese by Gene Yuen Yang. I felt weird seeing a name like his on the cover, then felt ashamed for feeling weird. _

Aster copied the book title and author into her planner.

Ellie messaged her again before she could reply, a rare occurrence.  _ Also, how have we never read James Baldwin before? _

_ I know!  _ Aster smiled as she thought of Taylor, the shy, tattooed girl in her life drawing class, who lent her all the James Baldwin books she owned.  _ Definitely one of the greatest American writers. _ She bit her lip before typing out another message.  _ I wonder if we would have turned out differently if we discovered these people sooner _ .

It took a few minutes for Ellie to respond. When she did, it was a photograph of the opening lines of an unidentified book, underlined in pencil. It read:  _ I’ve always felt unclaimed. This is a story of the ways I created a territory, something more than just an archipelago of identities, something that could steady me, somewhere that I belonged. _

Rather than type out her reply, Aster couldn’t help herself. She pressed the call button. “What was that from?” she asked.

“ _ Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl _ by Carrie Brownstein,” Ellie said. “Not a person of colour, but essential Pacific Northwest reading all the same.”

“I didn’t take you for a Sleater-Kinney fan,” Aster said, writing down the book’s name anyway.

“I’m not. I tried listening to her music but I didn’t like it,” Ellie admitted. “I just thought it was fitting.”

“You’re right,” Aster said, constantly surprised at how she could throw thoughts out into the wild and Ellie would find a path for them, without fail. “Anyway, I’m sure you’re busy, I’m sorry for calling you all of a sudden.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Ellie said. “We’ll talk soon?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, take care,” Ellie said, before hanging up.

Aster tossed her phone by her feet and leaned back on her bed. How did Ellie manage to do that to her every time? She always knew what to say. Oftentimes, Ellie would say things that Aster thought about, but didn’t know she was allowed to say out loud.  _ Not safe _ were the words she used, their first afternoon together in the hot spring, but it was more than that. Ellie  _ destabilised _ her. Aster still lived her life like it was too fragile to be shaken around, but Ellie didn’t seem to pay any mind to that. Maybe she knew better.

* * *

“I don’t understand what’s gotten into you, Aster,” her dad had said to her, when she said that she was applying to art school. “There are art schools on the west coast. I don’t understand why you’d want to go somewhere far from people you know.”

Aster wanted to tell him that that was the point. “I want to have different experiences, Dad.”

Her dad went on as if she hadn’t said anything. “And I don’t know why you didn’t end things with Trig sooner, when you knew he was a cheat. You knew his integrity was flawed, and yet, you still chose to be with him,” he said. “Did you not think of what being with a person like that would say about you?”

Aster wanted to say that she stayed with Trig partly because she thought that was what  _ her dad  _ wanted. “He was nice to me, anyway. That’s what mattered,” she said, more to herself than to him.

“And that Ellie girl, just enabling him.” Her dad pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe it would be good for you to get out of Squahamish.” He sighed. “I just wish it wasn’t so far away, mija.”

“Dad,” Aster began gently. “You did the same thing, didn’t you? You and Mom. If you didn’t leave, then I wouldn’t be here.”

Her dad looked her in the eye, and as if finally seeing her as more than the little girl he thought, or rather,  _ wished  _ she’d always be, he nodded.

* * *

It was in Boston where Aster learned that not all sermons were focused on Satan.

Aster never heard much about Satan when her dad was just being her dad, but as Deacon Flores, he couldn’t stop talking about Satan. It was an obsession. When her dad was behind the lectern, in his deacon’s robes, the subject of Satan loomed over the congregation. Aster should have made bingo cards. Someone must have made them already.

The priest at her uncle’s parish in Boston was different. He didn’t speak of temptation unless one of the readings mentioned it. Mostly, he talked about ways to be like Jesus. He talked about changing attitudes, such as having more compassion for the poor, or being more righteous against power and greed. But he also talked about actions, and Aster liked this about him. He told people about soup kitchens and food banks, about companion services for the elderly and disabled, about support groups for new immigrants. He was an organiser as much as he was a preacher, and he built a real community around him. Aster loved her dad as her dad, but as a deacon, she found that he spent too much time rubbing elbows with families like the Carsons to actually build any sense of community in the parish.

Aster listened intently to each sermon. She made mental notes of the projects and the organisations that the priest mentioned. She knew that Tio Matthew drove elderly parishioners around on weekends to run their errands, and that Tia Julia spent her Tuesday nights putting together parcels of food and supplies for needy families in their neighbourhood. Aster thought she would join them after the summer, when she would have moved into their basement apartment.

After mass one Sunday, she was playing with her cousins, keeping them busy while her uncle and aunt were having conversations with some of their friends who lingered around the parish as the parking lot emptied.

Two kids around her age, Latino, similarly dressed in bomber jackets and grey jeans, with matching closed-cropped haircuts, approached her. They looked vaguely familiar.

“Hey,” one of them said. “Don’t you go to MassArt?”

“Yes?” Aster said.

The other one spoke up, “You’re in my drawing class.”

“Yeah, and you’re in my literature elective,” the first one said. “I’m Jaime.” He pointed to the other kid. “This is Clara. We both started at MassArt this year, too.”

“Oh, hi. I’m Aster.” She offered her hand to them. There was an awkward pause, before they understood that she was sincerely requesting a handshake. Aster couldn’t help but look at their appearances. A tattoo peeked out of the neck of Clara’s sweater, and Jaime’s hair was bleached. “Were you guys at mass just then?”

“Father Paddy is awesome,” Clara said. “He’s our favourite.”

Aster frowned. “Really?”

“He became our parish priest when we were in eighth grade, and yeah, he’s great,” Jamie said. “I mean, look at us,” he gestured between him and Clara. “If he can still get us to come to church every Sunday…”

“Well, technically, our parents still make us come to church,” Clara said.

“Are you guys twins?”

Clara and Jamie looked at each other, paused for a second, before breaking into laughter.

“No, we’re best friends. I couldn’t stand this dumbass if I was related to him,” Clara said. “Hey, where do you live?”

“On campus, but I visit my uncle and his family every Sunday, go to church with them and have lunch after,” Aster said.

“Oh, what street do they live on?” Clara asked.

Aster told them.

“Hey, that’s just a block away from where we live,” Clara said. “Do you wanna hang out with us after your lunch?”

It was that day in Boston that Aster learned that Catholics came in all shapes and sizes, and not just the ones that walked through the parishes that her dad had served in throughout their life. Clara and Jaime took her around the neighbourhood they grew up in. They had been best friends since they were six months old. Their mothers met each other at a biweekly playgroup held in the parish meeting room. Clara’s family was from the Dominican Republic, while Jaime’s mother was Puerto Rican and his dad was Cuban. They played fast and loose with Catholic beliefs, but regarded the Gospels fondly, often referencing stories with exaggerated detail, for humorous effect. Aster knew that her dad would disparage the way they cherry picked from the faith, but she admired and envied how confident they were in doing so.

That first Sunday turned into many other Sundays, and most days, they would hang out together on campus too. Clara and Jaime knew things about topics that Aster hadn’t heard of, like the phenomenon of  _ gentefication _ , or about the independence movement in Puerto Rico. In turn, they listened eagerly about life on the west coast, about life in Squahamish, which they didn't judge too harshly, even when Aster was doing the same in her mind. They invited her to volunteer at the soup kitchen once a month with them, and she went along, and finally got the opportunity to have a conversation with Father Paddy. 

They were so different, yet Aster felt content and happy around Clara and Jaime. Was this how friendship evolved? Did you just wait to be lucky enough to find people who didn’t presume to understand you but listened to you anyway?

* * *

It was early morning when Aster’s train stopped at Squahamish. Her bones ached and her head was foggy. She had been travelling through the night, flying from Boston to Seattle, and then from Seattle to Squahamish. Her parents were waiting for her at the station. As her dad loaded her bags in the back of their minivan, she looked up at the windows on the second floor of the train station. She knew Ellie wasn’t going to be home for another week.

On her second day back in Squahamish, she volunteered to pick up her family’s order from the Munskys’ store. She got there in time to catch Paul arranging boxes on the bed of his truck. He grinned at the sight of Aster’s yellow hatchback.

Aster turned off her car and stepped out, walking over to Paul. “I forgot that you were leaving today,” she said.

“I’m back on weekends,” Paul said. “And you can come visit.”

Wenatchee was only half an hour away from Squahamish. “Yeah, of course I’ll visit,” Aster said.

Even more surprising than Aster’s burgeoning friendship with Ellie Chu was her friendship with Paul Munsky. When Ellie had left for Grinnell, and Aster still had a week or so to go before leaving for MassArt, she and Paul hung out once, and eventually decided that they were going to keep in touch when she left for Boston. They had nothing in common, but Paul just had such a comforting presence.

At first, she still automatically compared the Paul she knew in her head—the Paul who was actually Ellie—to the Paul who was in front of her. It was just such a jarring difference. And if Aster was being truthful, it still upset her from time to time. She had poured her heart out to a liar. Well,  _ two _ liars. In the fallout that followed that Sunday at church, she even considered taking Trig back. Vain and vapid as he was, at least he was honest.

But the catch was that with him, in his world, Aster didn’t have room to be honest about herself. To be honest  _ for  _ herself.

She could do that with Ellie and Paul. Mostly Ellie, she suspected. But Paul became a good friend all the same. Though she suspected that Paul had initially idealised her, projected his own desires on her, she was relieved at how Paul actually got to know her and just accepted her anyway. He didn’t try to fit Aster in the mold of his own assumptions. He gave Aster space, then went along with it. It then made sense, how someone as standoffish and inscrutable as Ellie seemed like an open book to Paul. It turned out that everyone was an open book around him eventually.

“You can bring Ellie, too, when she gets back,” Paul said. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “She doesn’t know how to drive, and you know that she’d bike to Wenatchee if she had to, and I’d rather she didn’t.” He shifted from one foot to another. “I mean, I’m not trying to like, be overprotective or whatever, it’s just too hot this time of year, and it’s a long way on a bike.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to offer if she ever wants to visit you. We already talked about it before school finished,” Aster said. She was somehow in the process of being absorbed into this friendship. At some point, mostly through cross-country messages and calls, Paul-and-Ellie began transitioning into Paul-and-Ellie-and-Aster. “Hey, are you planning to leave, like, right now?” she asked.

“Uh, I can go anytime,” Paul said. “Just gotta let the guy know when I’m on my way.”

Aster had an idea. “I’ll sort out my parents’ sausages and bring them back home, and then I’ll meet you back here,” she said. “I’ll follow you into Wenatchee, help you move into your place.”

“Are you sure?” Paul asked her. “I can manage by myself.”

“I wanna see what your place looks like,” Aster said. “And don’t let my size fool you, I’m pretty strong.” She made a show of flexing her muscles, causing Paul to burst out laughing.

“All right,” Paul said. He jerked his head in the direction of his family’s shop. “Get your sausages. I’ll meet you here in half an hour?”

* * *

Ellie returned to Squahamish four days after Aster accompanied Paul to Wenatchee. She messaged Aster the morning she arrived, having done a similar overnight journey, but they didn’t make plans to see each other until later, as Aster was busy working shifts at the restaurant.

Her parents planned to pay her rent—helpfully below market price—and her financial aid and scholarships were still ongoing, so Aster only planned to save up for her materials and for her spending money. She was looking into getting a work-study job, or a part-time job at the small grocery store in her uncle’s neighbourhood, once she got back to Boston.

After she finished the lunch shift one day, she emerged from the restaurant, into the stiflingly hot Squahamish summer. Ellie was standing outside, next to her trusty bike. “Hey,” she said to Aster. She was an echo of the previous summer’s end. Except something had changed about Ellie. Aster tried to work out what it was. It was the first time Aster had seen her wearing short sleeves. And her hair, still in a ponytail, was obviously shorter. These were the obvious changes. But there was  _ something  _ else.

Aster walked over to her. “Are you wearing makeup?” she asked, when she got close enough.

Ellie blushed. “No,” she said gruffly. Seeing Ellie talk in person never failed to amuse and amaze Aster. Ellie was afflicted with a babyface, looking like she hadn’t aged since the day Aster first saw her back in freshman year, so her voice, deep and deadpan, was a thing of wonder. “What are you smiling about?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Aster said.

“I’m not wearing makeup,” Ellie said. 

“All right,” Aster said. “How are things since you’ve been back?”

“Good,” Ellie said. “Just been catching up with Dad. I bought him some new DVDs.”

Aster knew that Mister Chu was a bit of an accidental cinephile. “I bet he’s happy you’re home,” she said.

“Yeah, he made braised pork and rice,” Ellie said.

“My mom made asopao de pollo,” Aster said.

Once, during the unforgiving winters of Massachusetts and Iowa, they talked about their parents, and the unusual ways they showed love. “I remember the girls at school, whenever their moms called, they’d say ‘I love you’ before hanging up,” Aster had said. “I don’t remember if I had ever said that to my parents. Or if they ever said it to me.”

“Hell no,” Ellie had agreed. “My dad wouldn’t say that to me anyway, and I believe in being reciprocal.”

Since that conversation, they had a running joke going, about the ways their parents showed their love. Aster would write something like,  _ Immigrant parent love language: telling you that your aunt was checking up on you via group chat, but not checking up on you themselves _ . Ellie would reply something like,  _ Can’t relate, I don’t know if I have any relatives to speak of. But my dad used to wait until I got home to start one of his movies, even if we’ve seen it hundreds of times _ . And then Aster would ask if Ellie was aware of any cousins, and Ellie would tease Aster about how her stories often needed to be accompanied by a family tree, just so people could keep up with all the people in them.

Ellie, the one standing in front of the restaurant now, frowned at her. “You’ve got a strange smile on your face, Aster,” she said.

“Can’t I be happy to see you?” Aster retorted. “You took a while getting here.”

“I had  _ exams _ ,” Ellie said. “I don’t know if they have those at  _ art school _ .”

Aster laughed. “Do you wanna get ice cream or something?” she asked. The local ice cream shop was just around the corner from the restaurant.

Ellie shook her head. She patted the plastic crate that was mounted on top of her back wheel. “I need to get back home,” she said. “You mentioned last night that you were working today, so I thought I’d just come by and say hi.”

“Making an appearance?” Aster joked.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“That’s gracious of you.”

“Are you off tomorrow?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah,” Aster said.

“I was thinking of going to visit Paul. Do you want to come along?” Ellie asked. “He finishes work at four, so we could meet him then and hang out, then get back here after dinner or something.” She looked down at the ground and lightly kicked the front tire of her bike.

“That sounds awesome, Ellie,” Aster said.

At the mention of her name, Ellie looked up again. “Okay,” she said.

“I’ll swing by at three forty-five tomorrow?” Aster suggested.

“Sounds good,” Ellie said.

The next day, Ellie was already waiting outside when Aster pulled up at the station. She climbed into Aster’s car.

“Sorry,” Aster said. “I don’t have aircon.”

Ellie simply shrugged. “Do you have an AUX cord, at least?”

Aster unfurled it from its coil on her console and handed it to Ellie. Their fingers brushed for the briefest moment. 

* * *

The butcher that Paul was apprenticed to let Paul live in a small, detached unit at the back of his house, which had an aircon, and was laid out similarly to the apartment that Aster would be living in when she returned to Boston. After getting cleaned up after work, Paul showed them around his neighbourhood in Wenatchee. 

They ended up in the carpark of Walla Walla Point Park, sitting next to each other on the bed of Paul’s truck, leaning against the back of the cab. Paul on one side, Aster on the other, and Ellie in the middle. They were huddled over Ellie’s phone, which Ellie was holding up, swiping through photos of her and her friends at Grinnell. Ellie’s friends looked as diverse as a university brochure, with matching big smiles.

After a while, Paul rubbed the back of his neck. “Dude, this would be so much easier if you just had an Instagram,” he said to Ellie.

“Yeah,” Aster said. “ _ Why  _ don’t you have an Instagram?”

“I’ve never felt the need to share anything that was going on with my life on a platform where everyone can see it,” Ellie said.

“You could put it on private,” Paul said.

“Or I could just send you photos on WhatsApp, like I’ve already been doing,” Ellie said.

“Still can’t believe that you got through high school without getting any social media,” Paul said.

“It would actually require being social,” Ellie said.

The words were harsh by themselves, but Aster observed that they came out naturally from Ellie’s mouth, without any hint of bitterness. It was as if she had just accepted the deal that she got in high school. That was fair. Her life at Grinnell looked so much more enriching than what Squahamish could have ever offered her. Aster put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder and said, “I think I prefer the photos on WhatsApp, too. Instagram is like, you’re putting it on blast to everyone… Just messaging them to someone feels more personal.”

“Short of printing them out and mailing them,” Paul said. “That’s old-fashioned.”

Ellie laughed at Paul. “All right, big guy, you’re always trying to be more modern than the rest of us,” she teased.

Aster retracted her hand from Ellie’s shoulder.

They left the park and picked up a selection of ice cream at the grocery. Afterwards, Paul drove them back to his apartment, where he put the TV on for them while he prepared dinner.

“What are you making?” Aster asked.

“Taco sausage,” Paul and Ellie said in unison.

Ellie tore her eyes away from the TV. “I hope you’re not having taco sausage every day, Paul.”

“Not  _ every  _ day,” Paul said. "But I  _ am _ testing recipes."

"Wait." Ellie's head whipped to face Aster. "You've been sending him those Bon Appetit Test Kitchen videos too, haven't you?"

Aster smiled and shrugged.

"Oh yeah, those videos are dope," Paul said. He was chopping a quarter head of purple cabbage. "I'm totally a Brad." He tipped the shredded cabbage into a bowl, then opened a jar of mayonnaise. "Ellie is a Claire."

"I can see that," Aster said, smiling at Ellie.

"Fair…" Ellie said. "She's the competent one who gets to do the challenging stuff."

Paul put a dollop of mayonnaise into the bowl of shredded cabbage, and began to mix it. "Who's Aster then?"

Ellie looked at Aster for a bit, her eyes slightly narrowed, the way they were when she was thinking. "Aster’s a Molly," she said.

"Oh yeah, totally, because Molly’s super nice and she knows lots of things, but she’s not as intense as Claire," Paul said. "All right, bear with me, ladies." He began fixing them tacos. He walked over with a plate in each hand, two tacos in each tray.

"These sausages look smaller," Ellie remarked.

“It’s my new blend. I’m trying out corn tortillas.” Paul sat down on the floor in front of the couch, roughly between Aster and Ellie. “Figured if I made them smaller the taco would hold up better. And then on it is just a quick slaw… I tried pico de gallo a couple days ago, but the flavours weren’t balanced enough. Have a taste and let me know if it needs cilantro.”

Aster folded the taco up and took a bite. Paul was watching their faces expectantly. The sausage tasted a bit like the Munsky bratwursts, but there were interesting flavours going on there, too. “Is that cumin, Paul?” she asked.

Paul beamed. “Yep!”

“And oregano,” Aster said.

“Wow, good palate,” Paul said.

Aster ate the rest of the taco in silence, not missing the way Ellie hadn’t said anything yet. But Paul wasn’t saying anything to Ellie either, so maybe that was just the way Ellie was when she was taste-testing.

Finally, Ellie finished her first taco. “Dude, you really need to eat more vegetables,” she said, but she was smiling.

* * *

When her dad was addressing an audience, either his students or his congregation, Aster thought that he had a beautiful voice. It was no wonder that he wanted to become a deacon. If Aster had a voice like that, she’d want to listen to herself talk all the time, too.

For the first time since Christmas, she was at the parish in Squahamish, listening to her dad read the Gospel.

“This is the Gospel of the Lord,” her dad proclaimed.

“Praise to you Lord, Jesus Christ,” Aster said, along with the rest of the congregation.

They sat down and watched as her dad, Deacon Flores, adjusted his robes and pushed his glasses up his nose, as he prepared to deliver his homily. “It’s the first week of summer break for many of our parishioners here, who have come back from college. My daughter included.” His eyes rested upon Aster in the fourth row. “I hope that you’ve had a good year away, and I’m happy to welcome you back into the parish.” He cleared his throat. “I hope that you continue hearing mass for the rest of the summer here at home. I think that after being out there, being surrounded by people with so many different  _ values  _ and  _ priorities _ , it’s good to come back, have a reset, and then go back out into the world where you share what we teach here in Squahamish.”

The deacon’s eyes swept the pews. This was his habit whenever he was about to deliver a line he believed to be impactful. “You know who doesn’t have a summer break?” He paused and held the silence. This being a Catholic Church, people were not really into the call-and-response. “ _ Satan _ .” He dropped the word like an anvil. “Satan works all year round.”

Aster shifted in her seat. She sighed, and tuned out the rest of the sermon by thinking about Boston.

Her dad always stayed behind after mass, to supervise the cleaning of the church, then he took Father Shanley back to his house, so Aster drove her mom and her sister home. As they waited for the deacon to get home so they could eat lunch, Aster sent a message in her group chat with Jaime and Clara:  _ How was Father Paddy today? _ And then she messaged her Tio Matthew, asking if he and his family wanted to video call after she had her lunch. She put her phone down on the arm of the couch and got up to help her sister set the table. She loved her family, so longing for a place where they weren’t around was a new, foreign feeling.

* * *

One night, they left Paul’s place late after dinner, because they decided to watch a movie. She and Ellie had a routine down on their drives to and from Wenatchee. She would get the car ready, while Ellie plugged into the sound system and picked a playlist on her phone. A guitar-driven song, with an aggressive bass drum, began, and Aster groaned. “Not _ this  _ again,” she said. “Honestly, I can’t believe that you listen to  _ this  _ kind of music.”

“What do you mean?” Ellie asked.

“You have the same taste as forty-year-old men on the verge of divorce,” Aster said.

“That’s very specific. I didn’t know you knew many forty-year-old men on the verge of divorce,” Ellie said. 

“I don’t. They just seem to have their own genre of music, you know. Lots of guitars and baritones,” Aster said.

“And they listen to it on vinyl while drinking whiskey and staring out their windows,” Ellie added.

“While wearing shawl collar cardigans.”

Ellie snorted. “What kind of music did Trig listen to?”

Aster rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”

“Soundcloud rappers. He’s totally a Soundcloud rapper kinda guy.”

“He sure was.” Aster sighed. “Did you hear about what he’s doing now?”

“I don’t really keep up with what’s happening around here,” Ellie said.

“Well, he’s studying business at Wenatchee, and apparently he’s dating Skye now,” Aster said.

Skye was one of the girls who made that remark about Aster’s family not owning their own house. Ellie seemed to remember this, too. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought him up,” she said.

Aster shook her head. “I’m over it. It’s ridiculous, that’s all,” she said. “I don’t think Trig ever stuck up for me. I got some lowkey crap at school, but he never said anything about it. I always wondered if it was because he was genuinely oblivious, or he was deliberately ignoring it so that everyone would still like him.”

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said again.

“Why are you apologising?” Aster asked. “You had a worse time than me.”

“Maybe. But the thing is, I didn’t care as much as you did,” Ellie said.

If Ellie had said this a year ago, Aster would have recoiled. She would have responded angrily. But hearing it now, she knew that Ellie was right. Aster did care a lot about those things, back in high school. And it still hurt her, from time to time. Lots of things still hurt her.

“Aster.” Ellie’s voice was gentle. “You’re still allowed to be upset about that, you know.”

“I know.”

Ellie cleared her throat. “You’re allowed to be upset about other things, too.”

“I know.”

“I think we need to talk about it, Aster,” Ellie said.

“Talk about what?” Aster said, aware that she was being purposely obtuse.

“What happened in senior year,” Ellie said. “All that stuff with Paul and everything. We’ve been talking for a year now, we’ve talked about all sorts of things, but we can’t keep avoiding this forever.”

“I told you, it’s okay. I don’t need an explanation,” Aster said.

“It’s not about the explanation.” Ellie straightened up in the passenger seat. “Aster… When something’s bothering you, or when you’re keeping yourself from saying something, you tap your fingers on the steering wheel like this.” She demonstrated by drumming her fingers on the dashboard, one finger after another, as if she was playing half a scale on the piano.

“You’ve been watching me, then,” Aster said. “Like you did when you were trying to figure out how to get me to like Paul. That’s what happened, right?”

“Yeah.” Ellie started scratching a frayed patch of denim on the left knee of her jeans. “It still confuses me, to be honest, how you forgave us so easily. How we hung out during winter break. How we’re hanging out now, like nothing ever happened.”

“Well, Jesus said forgive those who hurt you, so…” Saying this made her roll her eyes, and she felt ashamed almost immediately.

“I feel like it’s more than that,” Ellie pressed.

“Why do we have to talk about this?”

“Because it’s just gonna keep coming up,” Ellie said.

Aster pulled over on the side of the road. There was a service station up ahead, its fluorescent lights a beacon in the darkness. “I can’t have this conversation while I’m driving on these roads, sorry,” she explained to her. “Look, when I found out what you and Paul did, I spent a lot of time thinking if I had done something to deserve it. I  _ told  _ you things, Ellie. Stuff I never even said to Trig, or to any of my friends from class. I felt so exposed when I found out that I wasn’t saying them to the person I thought I was saying them to. I know this doesn’t happen to you often, but I can tell you, it’s not nice to be made a fool of.”

“I  _ know  _ that,” Ellie said. “I let it go too far. Paul just wanted me to get the ball rolling, but then I read what you wrote back, and I jumped on it… I didn’t want Paul to pick up from where I started, because I thought he’d just embarrass himself, so I kept going.”

“He was happy for you to do that?” Aster asked.

“To a point,” Ellie said. “But then, after a couple of letters, he was going to ask you out on real dates and everything, but I kept telling him that it wasn’t the right time.”

“Why?”

Ellie’s gaze was fixed on the service station. “You know why.”

Aster sighed. She  _ did  _ know why.

“Paul didn’t know about all those messages late at night, you know. He only knew as much as I told him,” Ellie said. “So in a way, I was lying to both of you. It was stupid and selfish. I knew I was in over my head… But I actually liked spending time with Paul, and I liked talking to you. I’ve never felt comfortable with anyone the way I feel comfortable around him.” Ellie took a deep breath, before turning her neck so that she was looking at Aster. “And I can’t really talk to anyone the way I talk to you.”

Aster just stared at her.

“So, I hope you can understand why I let it go on for so long,” Ellie said. “I know you said that you didn’t want an explanation, but…” She trailed off and shrugged.

“I think I knew, for longer than I cared to admit, that Paul wasn’t what he was presenting himself to be, that there was something off, with that disconnect between Paul in real life and Paul in the letters and the messages. I knew something was up,” Aster said. “But… I think I felt the same way as you did. I was so tired of pretending that I didn’t want to get out of Squahamish, that I wanted to marry Trig, that I wanted to keep being my dad’s obedient daughter. I was tired of hiding my dreams from people.” She looked out the window. “When we were writing to each other, I felt like I didn’t need to do any of that.”

“I’m sorry, Aster,” Ellie said. “You let your guard down and I hurt you.”

“It did hurt.  _ Does  _ hurt, sometimes,” Aster admitted. “But I think what I learned from you, and from Paul, were more important. You know that graffiti we did on the wall of that parking lot?”

“Yeah?”

“If we didn’t do all that back and forth, not to mention all our conversations about paintings, I wouldn’t have even tried applying to art schools,” Aster said. She had to rush all her art school applications, as she had only initially applied to west coast universities, and had only really planned on attending the University of Washington in Seattle. Ellie and Paul  _ had _ cooked up a stupid scheme, but Aster was still able to acknowledge how they contributed to her growth. She recalled what Ellie had said about the good paintings and the great paintings.

They were silent for a moment, both in thought.

Finally, Ellie said, “We should go home.”

Aster glanced at the time on her little dashboard clock. It was nearly midnight. “We should.” She started her car.

* * *

The rest of the summer passed by in a lazy rhythm. Aster worked, and when she wasn’t working, she was painting or reading. When she wasn’t doing that, she spent time with Ellie, when Ellie had her days off from working at the grocery store. Sometimes, they went to Wenatchee, but often, it was just the two of them. Aster went to church on Sundays then called her uncle’s family in Boston. She often talked with Jaime and Clara late into the night.

At the end of summer, Ellie left Squahamish first. Aster couldn’t see her off at the train station as she had work, but Ellie sent a selfie of her sitting on the train, giving Aster the thumbs up. Aster started the journey to Boston two days later. Her family stood on the platform as she got on the train. She found a seat and watched them through the window as they waved. Soon, the train began to move towards Seattle. 

It was funny, the way she felt as she saw them get smaller in the distance. Almost like she could breathe easier.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably my favourite chapter yet... Thank you all for your comments and feedback. I still don't know how long this fic is gonna be, but I'll keep writing steadily. I'm back to work in real life (no more work from home!) next week so my writing progress will slow down. I don't have a timeline for this but I guarantee that it will finish at some point. Please leave some more comments. I enjoy reading them!

At some point during the summer, Ellie emailed Mrs G to see if she wanted to meet for coffee someplace in town. Mrs G replied back, reminding Ellie that there was not a single barista in Squahamish (“Not a single decent one, anyway.”) and invited her over to her home instead. She lived in a bungalow not far from the school. Upon seeing Ellie, she smiled and gave her a hug, before welcoming her inside.

Ellie looked around. Mrs G’s house was cluttered for sure, with books and papers and random articles of clothing. As Ellie walked in, she nearly tripped over a pair of rubber boots.

“Oh, sorry,” Mrs G said. “My husband just leaves those lying around.”

Mrs G had put out sandwiches and cookies on a platter, along with a pot of coffee.

Ellie watched Mrs G pour her a cup of coffee. “I’m a barista, you know,” she said. “At Grinnell.”

“And yet you decided to work at the grocery store while you’re here,” Mrs G said.

“I didn’t want to remind them how indispensible I am,” Ellie said.

At this, Mrs G laughed. “God, speaking of, the  _ papers _ I’m getting… absolute nonsense,” she said. “The administration has been wondering why our grades in the humanities are down this year. I want to explain to them that your absence has something to do with it.”

“I could have resumed my business if I had stayed here, just saying,” Ellie said.

“You wouldn’t. You’d have done it for the people at E-Dub,” Mrs G said.

Ellie shook her head. “I’m not in the over ten-page biz.”

Mrs G laughed again. “Can I say this? I’ve missed you. You should see what I’m left with at the high school… it makes one want to quit their lovely, union-protected job.” She took a bite of a club sandwiches. “Grinnell looks good on you, though. How are you finding it?”

Ellie told her. There were many things she needed to adjust to in Grinnell, but the academic work wasn’t one of them. She told Mrs G about the small classes, about the provocative discussions, about the reading that was like unpacking a bottomless suitcase. She watched as Mrs G listened intently, nodding and smiling as she spoke. The faculty at the high school were mostly good, decent teachers who did their job, and all of them knew that Ellie was something special, but Mrs G was the only one who stoked her love of learning, who understood that the grades were secondary to Ellie. She just  _ really _ liked knowing things.

“Eat a sandwich,” Mrs G said, as Ellie caught her breath.

“Thanks.” Ellie picked up half of a club sandwich. “You made these?”

“Hell no. I’m on summer vacation, I don’t have time for that,” Mrs G said, grinning wickedly. “Ordered them from the bakery.” She observed Ellie take her first couple of bites. “So, you’re a coffee gal now, huh? Literally and also culturally.”

Ellie swallowed. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

“Before you went to Grinnell, would you have invited anyone to have coffee?” Mrs G asked.

“I didn’t have anyone to invite,” Ellie said. “And nobody invited me.”

“Hmm, but my point is, if you did have people to invite, where would you have gone? At the diner? For burgers and milkshakes? Or going,” Mrs G’s face took on an expression of disdain, “ _ mudding _ ?”

“Maybe.” Ellie shrugged. “But none of that happened.” Ellie’s entire social experience in high school could be summed up in that spring of senior year, where she and Paul followed Aster around, and finished the evening by watching movies with her dad back at the apartment. And then there was that party after the senior recital.

Mrs G leaned back in her seat. “Still not my point, Ellie.”

* * *

Her first semester as a sophomore began. Ellie sat in her sociology class. They were discussing two readings from Pierre Bourdieu: the article “The forms of capital” and an extract from  _ The Logic of Practice _ . Liam, a boy who dressed a little bit like Trig and acted a little bit like Paul (Ellie had long accepted that her measuring stick for guys her age were based on those two), was riffing on the concept of habitus.

“My parents met here, at Grinnell,” Liam said. “I had a Grinnell onesie. There were Grinnell banners hanging in my nursery. The people I went to high school with had similar childhoods. Their parents had put this idea in their heads that they were gonna go to a  _ particular  _ college.” He scratched his head thoughtfully. “When I first got here, I couldn’t really wrap my head around the reality of how different someone else’s journey to college was. So like, reading about this idea of habitus, of how we embody the values and the, I guess,  _ entitlements _ of our socioeconomic class… That just makes so much sense to me.”

Ellie leaned forward. “I’m interested in what you mean by entitlements,” she said. “I wouldn’t have called it that. I would’ve just referred to them as ‘aspirations’.”

Liam glanced at the professor, as if to check that he was still allowed to continue talking.

The professor nodded. “Yes, Liam, do go on,” she prompted.

“There were kids at my school who would get  _ angry _ , just like, properly  _ lose  _ it, when they didn’t get into the college whose merchandise they were dressed in from when they were in diapers,” Liam said. “They’d talk about not getting in because someone took their place through affirmative action or something. And like, I felt uncomfortable with how they said it, but I didn’t really say anything about it, because I got into Grinnell. But I’d probably be just as angry if I got rejected.” He paused. “That’s what I mean by entitlement… The kind of families we came from, the kind of households… We just expected these things. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, thanks, Liam,” Ellie said.

“I’m from  _ Detroit _ , like, my parents got laid off by GM and everything. We’re still on food stamps,” Mariah, a girl sitting across from Ellie, spoke up. “I think it wasn’t even ‘entitlements’ for us.” She looked at Ellie. “It’s not even ‘aspirations’. It’s  _ expectations _ . I remember when my parents were still on unemployment, so they were at home a lot, and they told me they just wanted me to graduate high school, maybe do community college, that’s it. I barely even started school then. I must have been like, second grade or something. But imagine that! That was the height of their expectations for me. And that was ambitious for them. You know people usually  _ expect  _ from kids where I grew up? Dropping out, dealing drugs, prison. Even the girls.  _ That  _ was our habitus.”

“Our expectations were like yours, Mariah, back in Chicago. At my high school, we got this simplified curriculum because they were just trying to get us to graduate,” another girl called Ashley chimed in. “We were reading these super easy books during sophomore year, like they could have been elementary school books. I went up to my English teacher and I said I wanted an alternative reading list. He gave me a list the next day, he told me he took a lot of it from the reading lists of the private schools in the city. I went to the school library and asked for two books at a time. I realise now that that was me taking my own initiative to increase my cultural capital.”

A guy, who was on exchange from a Scottish university, said, “I grew up in rural Scotland. We all worked for ourselves, and helped each other out, but we were all equal, you know? Do you know how jarring I find it that a lot of the people serving food out at Spencer Hall and at the Marketplace are students here too? I took my tray back once and the guy who was rinsing them was in my maths class.”

They went on like that for a while. Ellie didn’t say much about her own life, but would refer to the readings whenever the conversation turned back to her. At the end of the class, with all their brains thoroughly wrung out, their professor cheerfully dismissed them.

Ellie went to work, stewing on what the other students said. Her shift ended. Before she got on her bike to go to her dorm, she sent Aster a message:  _ Can I call you in ten minutes? _ When Aster replied with a  _ Yes _ , with a smiley face emoji, Ellie strapped her helmet on, got on her bike, and rode to her dorm.

Grinnell required only freshmen to be in double rooms. Ellie appreciated having a roommate but found that she preferred being alone. Since her GPA in freshman year qualified her for an achievement scholarship, she was able to afford getting a single room for her sophomore year. Some of the people in her classes managed to get those five-occupant suites, usually prioritised for juniors and seniors, but Ellie couldn’t think of four people she wanted to live with. She thought that maybe that would change next year, but for sophomore year, she was happy going solo and having a space to herself.

Ellie all but collapsed on her bed. She called Aster, and after some small talk, she started talking about the class she just had on Bourdieu.

“That sounds like a really interesting class, but you sound a little frustrated,” Aster observed.

“I just don’t get why they have to keep talking about themselves all the time,” Ellie said. “I managed to contribute to that discussion without sharing anything about my life.”

“Well, can you see how these concepts are present in your life?” Aster asked.

Ellie thought about it. “Yeah, of course I can. I can see how Bourdieu looked at the way society was organised and tried to make sense of it,” she said. “That was the point of the class, not… group therapy.”

Aster laughed, like she couldn’t help herself.

“What?”

“I can almost hear your brows furrowing through the phone,” Aster said.

“My brows do not  _ furrow _ ,” Ellie said, but she touched her forehead anyway.

Aster just laughed again. “Did the professor seem happy with the discussion? Was she trying to interrupt or anything like that?” she asked.

“No, she was trying to prompt them to elaborate further,” Ellie said.

“Then that was the point, Ellie.”

“Group therapy?” Ellie asked. She felt her brows furrowing again.

“No! Look, haven’t you realised it yet? When we were at school, we spent all this time reading and watching things about how other people lived their lives, as some form of escapism or something, right?” Aster appealed.

“Right…” Ellie said.

“But in freshman year, you read all those books from Asian-American authors.”

“Yeah…” Ellie trailed off, knowing that Aster would pick up what she left hanging. If this had been any other person, this line of conversation would cause Ellie to accuse them of meandering and to tell them to just get to the point. But she was always making special exceptions for Aster.

“The people in your class are just going through the same thing you’re going through,” Aster said. “Clearly, they’ve always been a little bit observant about what’s going on around them. But this is the first time in their lives they’re learning about a whole  _ language  _ to explain their experiences. That’s like, so powerful, don’t you think?”

Ellie had worked out, at this point in their friendship, that while thinking deeply into the nooks and crannies of a topic was her strength, Aster was definitely quicker at making connections and weighing significance. When Aster posited an idea like this, it was worth exploring. “This makes me think about that field trip we had the spring of sophomore year. To Seattle?”

“Oh yeah, we went to MoPOP, and the Science Center, and Pike’s Place,” Aster said.

“And the Wing Luke Museum,” Ellie said. She was the only Chinese kid in Squahamish, the only  _ Asian  _ kid, full stop, so she suspected that their day at the Wing Luke Museum was the faculty’s attempt to make the tour more culturally responsive for Ellie. “Remember when they took us around the old hotel where the migrant workers used to live?”

“I remember.”

Most of the kids in Ellie’s class stomped around the hotel indifferently, not feeling the significance of the lives that had been lived in there. On the other hand, that was one of the few times in Ellie’s high school life where she couldn’t tune out the ignorance of her classmates. Most of the rooms were cramped, with bunk beds, and a shared sink. The window was installed high up, closer to the ceiling, more of an attempt to provide natural light than a view of the city. Ellie just stood there, imagining how damp and smelly it must have been, with four men sharing this room, and sharing the one bathroom with all of the occupants on their floor. She had wanted to grab the nearest person and yell at them, “Why does this not matter to you?!”

“That hotel was in Carlos Bulosan’s book. He stayed there,” Ellie said. “I remember being at Wing Luke, and just having this heavy feeling in my stomach, like what I was looking at was  _ so  _ important, and that it was supposed to mean a lot to me, but I didn’t realise why until I read that book.”

“Yeah,” was all Aster said.

“Did something like that happen for you?”

Aster was silent for a bit. Finally, she said, “That happens for me every single day. It’s why I love being here.”

They talked for around another half an hour, before Aster had to excuse herself, as she was going to have dinner with her relatives. Ellie did some readings, then met up with some of her friends for dinner. The next day, during the discussion in her postcolonial literature class, she talked about Carlos Bulosan, the Freeman Hotel, and her sophomore year trip to the Wing Luke Museum.

* * *

_ Ellie, we’re publishing your article two days from now. Mind sending us a headshot? _

Ellie groaned as she read the email. She had written a piece for the website of the  _ Scarlet & Black _ , the college’s weekly newspaper. The piece was a guide to cycling around town and campus, geared towards freshmen. It had been easy to write; she was accustomed to writing far more challenging things. She wouldn’t have done it anyway, if one of the guys in her philosophy class, who claimed to be on the  _ S&B _ staff, didn’t ask her to.

“No one else on your staff is a cyclist?” she had asked.

The guy shoved his hands in the pockets of his green field jacket. “My editor wants a fresh voice.”

And now the editor was emailing her about a headshot. It was _ writing _ . Ellie didn’t understand why people were so intent on seeing people’s faces after reading their stuff. Shouldn’t the words speak for themselves? She muttered unintelligibly as she scrolled through her phone, hoping to find a photo of herself that would be deemed acceptable. She had no luck. She had to go find someone who would take her photo.

She thought perhaps that one of her friends would take it for her. “Hey, Ava, can you take a photo of me?” she asked, as her and Ava left the dining hall after lunch. She pointed to a bench in the courtyard. “Over here would be fine.” She opened the camera on her phone and was about to hand it to Ava, who was looking at her with a curious expression.

“A photo of you? Are you finally getting an Instagram?” Ava asked. A sporty blonde girl, Ava sat beside Ellie in their first semester calculus class and had been friends since.

“For the last time, Ava, I’m  _ not  _ getting an Instagram,” Ellie said. She thrust the phone at her. “It’s for the  _ S&B _ . You know how I wrote that article? They want a headshot to accompany my bio blurb thing.”

Ava looked at Ellie’s phone. “You want me to take a photo of you with that?” she asked, then gestured dramatically at the harsh midday sun. “In  _ this  _ lighting?”

“Dude, you’re gonna be a psych major, don’t even talk about lighting,” Ellie said. She wished she could better express how this whole thing was a bit distressing to her. The last time Ellie had posed for a photograph, it was her high school graduation. The last time before that, her mom was still alive. The ID photos for her college applications, hastily taken at the Squahamish drugstore, did not count. 

“Look.” Ava pulled out her phone instead. “Do you remember my roommate last year?”

“Jordan,” Ellie said. She had met her in passing.

“Yeah. She takes photos, with a nice camera and everything,” Ava said. She looked down on her screen, her thumbs tapping away. “I’ll ask her if she can do your photos.”

“That’s excessive,” Ellie said. She dropped her phone back in her pocket.

“You can repurpose the headshot, Ellie,” Ava said. “ _ S&B _ . Scholarship applications. Dating app profile.”

Ellie frowned. “Dating app,” she said. “I don’t even have an Instagram.”

“Weirdo,” Ava said affectionately. Her eyebrows raised as she read her phone screen. “Jordan says she’s available later. She lives in the same residence hall as you.”

“Oh. Great,” Ellie said.

“She said you can just come to her room and knock at like, six-ish, if that works?” Ava proceeded to give her Jordan’s room number, and her phone number, too, for good measure.

At six-ish, later that evening, Ellie went downstairs—Jordan lived on the floor below hers—and knocked on the door.

The door creaked open after a few seconds, and Jordan stood in the doorway. For some reason, Ellie had forgotten, or it had failed to register the first time around, that Jordan was Asian. She wore stylish glasses, and her hair was in a sharp bob. “Ellie?” she said. “Come in.”

Jordan’s room was laid out like Ellie’s. Single bed, wardrobe, desk and chair. There was a camera on her desk, beside her open laptop. Ellie noticed that there were two lit desk lamps on the floor, aimed towards Jordan’s bed.

“Don’t see the point in buying a proper lighting rig,” Jordan said. “I had to improvise.” She handed Ellie a piece of glossy card, then sat on the chair, facing Ellie. “You can sit on my bed.”

Ellie sat on the edge of the bed, holding the card gingerly.

Jordan picked up her camera. She looked at Ellie. “Further back, don’t be shy,” she said.

Ellie scooted backwards. Jordan’s duvet cover bunched up underneath her jeans. With her free hand, she instinctively straightened the cover. Jordan’s sheets felt softer than hers. She pulled her hand back and hoped Jordan didn’t notice.

“Yeah, that’s better,” Jordan said. “Pull your shoulders back?”

The action made Ellie realise how much she slouched.

“All right, now can you hold the card just at chest level?” Jordan waited until Ellie followed her instructions. “Just a bit higher,” she said. “Now tilt it a little towards you. There. You all right holding that in place there? It’ll be quick.”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Ellie said.

Jordan raised the camera to her face. She held it there for a couple of seconds before lowering it. “Relax your shoulders,” she said.

Ellie did.

“All right, now just lift that card up a little bit,” Jordan told her.

“I can’t do that and keep my shoulders relaxed at the same time,” Ellie said.

“Sure you can,” Jordan said, infuriatingly casual. “Don’t think too much about it.”

Ellie glared at her. “I don’t know why you’re asking me to do this anyway,” she said.

“Well, it’s to keep unwanted shadows off your face, and usually, an assistant holds it, but as you can see,” Jordan chuckled, “This is a photographer-only operation. So just, hold it up and relax, all right? Try your best.”

“Fine.” The sooner this was over, the better.

Not even five minutes later, Jordan had hooked up her camera to her laptop and was showing Ellie the photos. Ellie was surprised to find that she liked them. Whenever she saw herself in the mirror, she believed that she still looked like a thirteen-year-old. Through Jordan’s lens, however, she found that she actually looked her age, or something close to it. More importantly, she looked confident and capable, like someone who wrote articles for newspapers.

“I’ll need to do some minor adjustments, just with the saturation and the colour levels.” Jordan’s pinky hovered over an area of Ellie’s cheekbone on the screen. “It’s just a little washed out. It’s a camera problem, not a  _ you  _ problem. I’ll email this to you.”

“You know my email?” Ellie asked, rather stupidly.

Jordan smiled at her. “Everyone’s email is formatted the same way… And if all else fails, you’re in the online directory,” she said.

“How much do I owe you?”

“You can just get me a coffee,” Jordan said. She leaned back against her chair. She was so relaxed, so laid back, that Ellie couldn’t tell whether she was actually sincere or not.

“When?” Ellie asked her.

“Anytime. You got my number, my email… Just let me know,” Jordan shrugged. “Or I’ll let you know.”

Two days later, the article was published. Ellie sent it to Paul, Aster, and Mrs G. Paul got back to her first. He didn’t say anything about the article, but he did write about how good the photograph of Ellie looked.

* * *

Jordan emailed her a week later:  _ How about that coffee? _

They decided to go into town for coffee. Jordan didn’t have a bike, so they got on one of the shuttle vans that frequently ferried students into the town centre. They went to a cafe that Ava had recommended. It was warm and cosy inside, and Jordan took off her jacket—an off-white cotton jacket with a shearling interior—before she sat down. A necklace’s silver chain was visible around the neck of her thin blue sweater.

For some reason, Ellie had assumed that Jordan, like Ava, was from St Louis, but over coffee, she learned that Jordan was from Chicago, and that both sets of her grandparents had moved over from China sometime during the late 1950s. Unlike Ellie, she had been back to visit China twice over her lifetime, on vacation with her family.

After that coffee, Jordan started inviting her to trivia nights with her friends. They started eating together in the dining hall, sometimes with Ellie’s friends, and sometimes with Jordan’s friends. They messaged each other frequently, a good mix of memes, one-liners, and actual thoughtful musings. There was a compelling quality about Jordan. People—Ellie included—were drawn to her. She smiled like she was fully aware of its effect on others. She was comfortable in her own skin. She talked like she knew what she wanted. She was going to do her degree in American Studies, she had told Ellie. She was probably going to stay in Chicago and work in education programs. Maybe she would retrain as a teacher before she turned thirty. “I’ll see how it goes,” she often said.

One day, Jordan asked Ellie if she wanted to come with her to Chicago for Thanksgiving. They arrived in Chicago on a Wednesday evening. Jordan’s parents picked them up from Union Station and drove them to their home in the suburbs. It wasn’t the size of their house that shocked Ellie, but it was how  _ new  _ it was, newer than anything she had ever seen back home. She knew that Jordan’s mother was an orthodontist, and that her father was a law professor at Loyola University. Before this, Ellie really had no concrete measure of what certain professions could afford.

Ellie thought she would be sleeping on an air mattress in Jordan’s bedroom, so being led to the guest bedroom next to it was unexpected. The guest bedroom had a queen bed. Ellie had never slept on a queen bed before. She hadn’t even imagined it. When Jordan’s parents gave them time to settle in before dinner, Ellie lay on top of the covers, right in the middle of the bed, stretching her limbs to see if she could reach its farthest corners. She couldn’t. She called her dad to let him know that she had arrived safely, and promised to call him tomorrow. She hung up just in time for Jordan to knock on the door and then stroll into the bedroom, asking Ellie if she wanted to see her bedroom. She, too, had a queen bed.

Framed photographs lined one of Jordan’s walls. They were of a variety of subjects, shot in colour, and were actually visually interesting, not like some photography that only looked interesting because it was in black and white. “You took these?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah,” Jordan said.

“How come you’re not studying art?”

Jordan shrugged. “If I wanted to study art, I would have just stayed here for college,” she said. “But I just like taking photos, that’s all. Being good at it is a bonus, I guess.” She paused. “Actually, no, it’s a skill I had to learn. I like to challenge myself.”

“So that’s why you’re at Grinnell?” Ellie asked.

“Basically.”

Ellie examined one of the photos, of a small dog on a playground merry-go-round, flanked by two delighted toddlers. “One of my friends from home is at art school in Boston,” she said.

“MassArt?” Jordan asked.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “She’s a painter, though.”

“Boston’s a long way from Washington,” Jordan said.

“I know, but she’s got family there,” Ellie said. The point was that Ellie was in Iowa, also far from Washington, and she didn’t have any family. She made a mental note to message Aster, to tell her about Chicago and Jordan’s house, before she went to bed.

When the Thanksgiving celebrations had died down the following evening, Ellie excused herself to call her dad. He had been invited to the Munskys’ dinner and said goodbye so he could get ready. Ellie then looked at her messages from Paul and Aster. She had sent Paul surreptitiously-taken photos around Jordan’s house, and he replied with random emojis that were probably intended to convey awe.

_ Are you really staying there?  _ he had written.

_ Yep. And guess what? They serve traditional Thanksgiving food.  _ It was Ellie’s second  _ American  _ Thanksgiving, in terms of the culinary experience.

Paul sent her a sad face emoji.  _ If we had known that you and your dad weren’t didn’t do Thanksgiving all through high school, my family would definitely have invited you over _ , he wrote.

_ I know _ , Ellie responded.  _ Thankful for you always, bud _ .

Aster had sent through photos of her own Thanksgiving meal, before eventually sending a good night message, saying that she had too much food and was ready to fall asleep. Ellie zoomed in on the photos, looking at the mix of Puerto Rican food with traditional Thanksgiving fare. She had hoped that Jordan’s family’s Thanksgiving meal would not be so Americanised, and she could safely say that she has had her fill of it for the year. The turkey was decent, if uninteresting, but it was the sweet potato and marshmallow casserole that overwhelmed Ellie’s rational senses, not to mention her taste buds. She wasn’t quite sure if she liked it or not.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Ellie said.

Jordan walked in and closed the door behind her. She was already in her pyjamas. She sat down next to Ellie on the bed. “I hope my family didn’t tire you out,” she said.

Ellie put her phone down on the pillow, and rolled over so she was on her back, looking up at Jordan. “The sweet potato casserole did me in,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s not exactly subtle, isn’t it?” Jordan asked. “What does your family usually have for Thanksgiving?”

Ellie gave her a short rundown of her mom’s Thanksgiving meal. “But since she died, we’ve just been having frozen chicken pot pies,” she said. “Like those individual ones.”

Jordan made a face. “You serious?”

“Completely,” Ellie said.

“Wow.” Jordan lay down too, the two of them top and tail, across the width of the mattress. “I actually wasn’t sure how this Thanksgiving was gonna go. It’s the first time I’ve seen my parents since,” she swallowed, “since I came out to them.”

Ellie blinked. “Oh?”

“On the way to Union Station at the end of the summer, I was like, ‘Hey mom and dad, I’m a raging lesbian, see you at Thanksgiving,’” Jordan said. She laughed. “I hopped out of the car, grabbed my suitcases, and ran to where the Grinnell people were lined up for the bus, before they could say anything.”

“Oh.” Ellie thought of how Jordan’s parents had been acting around them. There was no tension or anything like that. If they had reacted adversely to their daughter’s revelation, then they were keeping it to themselves. “They seem okay with it.”

“We haven’t talked about it,” Jordan said. “Not even over text.”

Ellie was hit with a realisation. “Wait, is that why you asked me to come?” she asked. Was she just here as a buffer?

“Oh, no.” Jordan propped herself up on her elbow, to look Ellie straight in the eye. “No! Don’t think that, please. I would have invited you regardless. I was thinking, Thanksgiving on a college campus would suck.”

“It was okay last year, but yeah, this is really nice. Your family’s nice,” Ellie said. “You know this is the first time I’ve been in another Chinese person’s house?”

“For real?” Jordan asked. When Ellie nodded at her, she let out a low whistle. “I guess I should be honoured, then.” She lowered her head back on the mattress. “Hey, Ellie, I was wondering…” Jordan’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet. “You’re gay too, right? Or some form of queer?” When Ellie didn’t respond right away, she hastily continued, “I mean, I don’t want to assume… But like, I thought my gaydar was pretty good... I’d be embarrassed if -”

“I am, yeah.” It was strange to say it out loud, even after years of thinking it. Ellie had always known there was something different about her, but she didn’t let herself worry about it. She had told herself that there were more things to worry about. Electric bills to pay, trains to watch, essays to write. Her growing attraction to girls had been at the bottom of the list, and by the time it came to the forefront, she found that she had already accepted that about herself.

“Oh.” Jordan sounded relieved. “That’s great. I mean, that my gaydar is working, that’s all.” She laughed awkwardly. She sat up. “I’m still too bloated to go to sleep. Do you wanna go downstairs and have some tea?”

“Sure.” Ellie sat up, too.

* * *

Winter arrived at Grinnell, and for the sophomores, the deadline of choosing their major or concentration loomed above them. They were told to schedule meetings with their academic advisors—the professors who taught their First-Year Tutorials—with the purpose of having this conversation.

Ellie’s academic advisor was Martin, a religious studies professor who apparently spent a not-insignificant amount of time as a priest in Philadelphia. Martin was in his late fifties. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and a pleasant smile. He spoke slowly and deliberately, and had a sly sense of humour. During last year’s class on Jesus, he was often irreverent. He claimed he was allowed to be that way because he had done the time.

When they met for a catch-up, once every two weeks or so, they often talked about Ellie’s writing. Martin constantly praised Ellie’s writing voice, and encouraged her to write for the  _ S&B _ , for  _ The Grinnell Review _ , for various publications and competitions. Ellie refrained from telling him about her clandestine high school writing career. She knew that writing was something she was good at, but she couldn’t find any pleasure in it. It was satisfying to build something out of a collection of ideas, and it had been challenging to do it as if she was a half dozen different people, but she wouldn’t consider it  _ enjoyable _ .

Martin read Ellie’s course enrolment record on his computer. “Oh, good call on that New Testament class I’m teaching next semester, I think you’ll really enjoy that one,” he said. He looked away from his screen. “So, what’s the plan, Ellie? What are you thinking of majoring in?”

“I have no idea,” Ellie said.

“Looking at your records here, you’re getting enough credits to fulfill the requirements for several majors,” Martin said.

“I’m aware,” Ellie said. “English, sociology and philosophy.”

“All great disciplines. It’s a shame religious studies isn’t one of them,” Martin said.

“I don’t believe in God,” Ellie said. What a funny thing to say, she thought. Wouldn’t  _ I don’t believe in  _ a  _ god  _ work better? Saying it that way, talking about “God” as a named being rather than a concept, seemed to contradict the entire point of the sentence. She repeated it in her head. It didn’t deny the existence of God. Rather, it denied Ellie’s faith in the ability of God, like she might as well be saying that she didn’t believe in Donald Trump.

“I’ve been teaching here for a decade now. Many of my greatest students aren’t religious at all. It’s not about building faith, it’s about challenging and questioning it.” Martin pushed his glasses up his nose. “Anyway, I was only kidding about religious studies. Let’s get back to it.” He glanced at his computer screen again. “Oh, you’ve gotten As in all your sociology, English and philosophy courses so far.”

“Of course,” Ellie said.

“That doesn’t really help your decision, does it?” Martin asked.

“Not one bit.” If Ellie had a rebellious bone in her body, she would rail against the concept of majors. Institutes of higher learning promoted themselves as places where young people could expand their minds to their heart’s content… up until the end of their second year. Out of the three disciplines, Ellie didn’t have one she preferred the most. She liked them equally, and she liked the knowledge she got from  _ every  _ discipline most of all, so having to pick just  _ one  _ was unfair.

Martin glanced at the computer again. “It’s not like any of the choices lead to obvious career paths,” he deadpanned.

“Well, neither does religious studies,” Ellie retorted.

“Ah, but I always thought you’d make a good pastor,” Martin said. “Okay, here’s what I always say to students who are undecided, at this point in time: think about it over Christmas break, and I’ll see you next semester.”

“That’s not very helpful,” Ellie said.

“I know, but I’m not worried about you,” Martin said. “Whatever decision you’ll make will be the right one.”

* * *

Aster had sent Ellie a photo of one of her paintings, without any explanations. It was painted in acrylics, in shades of grey and white and gold, in the bold style that Aster had been cultivating. 

Ellie moved her phone back and forth, and looked at the screen from different angles. She couldn’t work out whether the central silhouette was of a woman or of a dove. She expressed this to Aster.

_ That’s the point _ , Aster wrote back.

_ I like it _ , Ellie responded.  _ White and gold always made sense for me, but the grey really ties it together and I didn’t expect that. _

_ I’m glad you pointed it out. I was just trying something new,  _ Aster wrote.

_ It’s great _ , Ellie replied.

Aster sent her a  _ Thanks _ , accompanied by a heart emoji, in bright red.

* * *

Trivia nights had become one of the highlights of Ellie’s social life at Grinnell. She had been absorbed into Jordan’s team, and they did well for themselves, placing somewhere within the top four most weeks, if not winning the whole evening. They placed second during the last trivia night before exams and winter break.

It was after ten o’clock when the night wrapped up. Jubilant, Ellie and Jordan walked back to their dorm. Snow fell from the sky in sparse flakes, dusting Ellie’s navy coat. She had pulled her hood up. Jordan, in her off-white jacket, had no hood, so snow was getting caught in her hair.

“I wonder how much we’ll get,” Ellie mused.

“We’ll find out in the morning,” Jordan said.

Ellie linked her arm through Jordan’s.

Just before they reached the steps to the entrance of their residence hall, Jordan unlinked their arms and turned to face Ellie. “I like that you know about those Korean sea women,” she said.

“The haenyeo on Jeju Island,” Ellie said.

Jordan nodded. “Yeah, those,” she said. “And I like that you know the capitals of African countries that I’ve never even heard of.” She wrinkled her nose. “I mean,  _ Burundi _ , I couldn’t even point that out on a map.”

“Neither can I. I just know the capital. My memory’s just funny like that.” 

“Your memory is  _ awesome _ ,” Jordan said.

“Uh, thanks?” Ellie shoved her hands in her pockets to keep warm, not quite understanding why they were still standing outside. She watched Jordan, who was starting to look pale, and was shifting her weight from one foot to another.

“I just...” Jordan brought a hand to her forehead, before retracting it. She fussed with the zipper of her jacket, not quite pulling it down, but moving her hand as if she was planning to.

“Jordan, are you all right?” Ellie asked.

“I just wanna be around you all the time, Ellie.”

Ellie laughed, a little bit unsure. She tried to remember if Jordan had snuck any drinks from their older teammates. “You  _ are  _ around me all the time,” she said. At this stage, she spent more time with Jordan than any of her other friends.

As if seeming to detect Ellie’s nervousness, Jordan stilled and straightened, seemingly journeying back to her usual self. “What I mean is that I like you,” she said. “And by that, I mean, I want to go out with you.”

“Oh.” Ellie’s eyes widened. “Like on a date.”

“Yeah, on a date,” Jordan said. “Uh, you don’t have to make any decisions now… I just wanted to put it out there, just so you knew.”

“Oh,” Ellie said again.

Like nothing had happened, Jordan made for the entrance. “Now, come on,” she said. “Before we freeze out here.”

Ellie followed her inside. They climbed the stairs and she said goodbye to Jordan as she reached her floor, then Ellie climbed the rest by herself. When she got into her room, she kicked her shoes off and lay on her bed face down, still fully dressed. It seemed like she had  _ more  _ decisions to consider over Christmas.

* * *

Paul was home for Christmas. The butcher didn’t expect him to be back at work until after New Year’s. With both of them having spending money, albeit a meagre amount, for the first time in their lives, they drove to the diner and ordered food without counting how much cash there was between them.

“So she asked you out, and what did you say?” Paul asked.

“I didn’t say anything,” Ellie said. She and Jordan had only exchanged a few messages since the school shut for winter break.

“Dude, she  _ asked  _ you out,” Paul said. “And she’s pretty and she sounds cool.”

“I’m aware of that. I spend time with her every day,” Ellie said. “I was just shocked, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t think anyone would ask me out, ever,” Ellie said. Especially not  _ Jordan _ , who was well-off and self-assured and had been to places like New York and Amsterdam and Milan.

Paul looked up from where he was dipping a fry in his milkshake. “Why not?” he asked. “You’re like, the coolest person I know. You know so many things, and you’re funny, and you live above a train station.”

“You say that like I chose to live there,” Ellie said.

Paul shrugged. “Jordan would be  _ lucky  _ if you agreed to go on a date with her,” he said.

Ellie looked down at her plate of fries. “Thanks, I guess,” she muttered.

“What kind of name is Jordan anyway?”

“She’s the youngest of three sisters, and when her mum was pregnant they didn’t want to know the gender so they decided that the baby was gonna be a boy, and that they were going to name him Jordan. Her dad loves the Bulls,” Ellie explained. “But you know, that was wishful thinking on their part, because, yeah…”

“Oh, I feel that,” Paul said. “My parents thought they were finally gonna get a daughter, so they got Pauline ready.”

Ellie made a face.

Paul laughed. “I  _ know _ !”

They ate in comfortable silence. They talked some more, about movies and about Paul’s life in the butcher shop, and then finally, they paid the bill and got back into Paul’s truck.

“By the way,” Ellie said, looking out the window into the dark Squahamish streets, “I told my dad that I like girls.”

“Oh.” Paul blinked rapidly, and his hands squeezed the wheel for a second. “What did you say, exactly?”

“That I like girls,” Ellie said. “It’s difficult to articulate in Chinese.”

“And what did he say?” Paul asked.

“He said ‘Okay, that’s fine’, then asked me what movie I wanted to put on while he fried the dumplings,” Ellie said. “We haven’t talked about it since.” She watched as Paul kept his eyes on the road, but nodded understandingly. He knew that Ellie and her dad didn’t make a habit of talking.

“I’m happy for you, Ellie, I guess,” Paul said.

“I’m relieved, more than anything,” Ellie said. “Hey Paul?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell anyone else yet, okay?”

“Sure, bud. Secret’s safe with me.”

* * *

After New Year’s, Ellie began the long journey back to Grinnell. On the flight to Des Moines, she read the book that Aster had bought her for Christmas: an essay collection by a writer named Jia Tolentino. She finished the entire book on the flight. Bleary-eyed, she caught the bus from Des Moines to Grinnell. She looked Jia Tolentino up as soon as she got to her room, and found an essay that she wrote for  _ Jezebel  _ in 2016, entitled “All the Greedy Young Abigail Fishers and Me”.

She read it, her heart beating in her ears, louder and louder as she went on. When she finished, she practically jumped to her desk to grab a spiral notebook, the one she used to outline her college papers. Pen in hand, she wrote and wrote, until her whole right arm, from fingers to shoulder, were sore with effort.

She dropped the pen and book on her bed and went downstairs. She found herself knocking on Jordan’s door.

“One sec,” Jordan said from behind the door. She opened it, and stood there, looking soft and cosy in sweatpants and a chunky knit sweater. “Ellie,” she breathed.

“Hey."


	4. Chapter 4

If Clara hadn’t texted Aster about meeting up later that afternoon, Aster would have probably been late to her studio class. She only had two early classes this semester. All her other classes were in the afternoons. She considered herself a morning person, so she woke up reasonably early anyway, but she found that she liked having the time in the morning to take it slow. She would wake up, fix herself breakfast, shower, and do some schoolwork or reading before she had to get on the subway.

Aster was halfway through  _ Like Water for Chocolate  _ when Clara had messaged her, and that was when she saw the time. She had to go. Hurriedly, she laced up her boots, shouldered her backpack, and bundled up in preparation for late winter in Boston. Out on the streets, walking to the subway, she felt shaken and disoriented. When her phone had gone off, she was curled up on the couch, frowning down at the pages, her hand clutching at her sweater, just over her heart.

It was not the first time Aster had caught herself falling so deeply into the world of a book. She had a tendency to do that; she knew this about herself. She had felt the same way when she first read  _ A Separate Peace _ , back in her freshman year of high school, and came to the conclusion that Gene was just like her, except he let his destructive, masculine tendencies inform the way he should act about matters he didn’t fully understand. Reading  _ The Italian Teacher _ a couple of years ago had the same effect, as she followed the protagonist taking revenge against his father, seemingly oblivious that it wasn’t bringing him triumph, but was instead allowing him to spiral into mediocrity. And there were other books, too. Aster felt things deeply, on a physical level. She read words and her breath would quicken, and her fingers would go clammy. She would lose track of time and run for the subway station, her mind not at all there.

She rushed into the studio just as people were filing into the room, and got set up at her space. She stared at the work in progress in front of her. There was a layer of teal, laid out in broad brushstrokes of oil paint, reminiscent of the cover of  _ Like Water for Chocolate _ . Aster examined the little cracks and gaps in the paint, thinking about filling them in. She looked at her tray of paints. She decided that she would mix a terracotta colour.

Two hours later, she emerged from the studio feeling a little more clear-headed. She met up with Clara, and they wandered around a few thrift shops before taking the subway back to their neighbourhood. Aster joined her Tio Matthew and his family for dinner before going back downstairs, and opening the book again.

* * *

As if he had sniffed out Aster’s growing questions, and as if he suddenly realised the independence he had inadvertently granted his daughter, Aster’s dad had taken to messaging her after mass to quiz her on that Sunday’s readings. At first, Aster didn’t talk to anyone about the messages, instead anxiously typing her responses while sitting alone in her apartment, poring over her highlighted copy of the Bible. She drafted her messages in her Notes app, reading over them several times before feeling confident enough to send them to her father. Sunday mass, which had evolved into a pleasant ritual for her, in the company of her tio’s family and Jaime and Clara, helmed by the compassionate Father Paddy, became something that she dreaded once more.

One day, after mass, Tia Julia told her that she could skip lunch with them to go out with Jaime and Clara. Aster made an attempt at refusing, but upon further prodding, she ended up telling not just Tia Julia, but her tio, Jaime and Clara,  _ and  _ their parents, about her dad’s messages.

Tio Matthew put a comforting hand on Aster’s shoulder. “Your dad should understand that you have a life away from your phone,” he said. “Go hang out with Jaime and Clara. You can write to him later.”

She went out for vegetarian food with Jaime and Clara. In the middle of their meal, Jaime wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Show me your dad’s questions?” he asked Aster.

“Why?” Aster asked.

“I wanna see where he’s trying to trip you up,” Jaime said.

Aster’s first instinct was to defend her dad, that he was just interested in how Aster was responding to Scripture, but Jaime was right. The questions were a way of him building evidence that Aster was straying from the kind of faith that  _ he  _ had instilled in her. “Okay.” She gave Jaime her phone.

Jaime scrolled through the messages, humming and mumbling incoherently as he read. “Oh man,” he said. “It’s either his knowledge of the Gospels aren’t that great, or he’s wilfully twisting them.”

Clara leaned over so she could have a look at the phone screen. “Wait, I wanna see!”

From that Sunday onwards, Jaime and Clara would come over after Sunday lunch and help Aster with her dad’s questions. They would discuss the Scriptures together: the self-righteousness in Paul’s epistles, the doomsday tones in some of the Old Testament readings, the different characterisations of Jesus in the four Gospels. Through their conversations, they would come up with answers that would be palatable to Deacon Flores. They would send it off and would share exhilarated laughs while they waited for him to respond, as if they were getting away with something.

* * *

In the studio, Aster started on a painting inspired by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Different shades of brown and yellow, with indistinct blobs of black and white. In her art history class she learned about the relationships between artists and the Church. She wrote about all this to Ellie.

Ellie sent her a link to a website of an artist called Colin McCahon.  _ This guy has a gazillion different artworks just based on the stations of the cross _ , she wrote.

Aster ended up spending nearly two hours scrolling through Colin McCahon’s artwork, laden with unsubtle, unabashed religious imagery.  _ This dude was obsessed with crosses _ . She attached a screenshot of a page from his online catalogue, a good chunk of which consisted of paintings with crosses on them.

_ Many crosses to bear _ , Ellie replied.

Aster snorted. She typed,  _ Anyone ever tell you you’re not funny? _

* * *

After her six-hour Saturday shift at the grocery store, Aster walked to the local library to return books. She was putting each book one by one through the returns slot when a tall woman wearing the telltale librarian lanyard stood by, waiting to empty the box of returned books.

“Sorry,” Aster said.

The woman shrugged. “Take your time,” she said. “Did you like that?” She nodded at the book in Aster’s hands.

Aster looked down at  _ Like Water for Chocolate _ . “I, uh… I don’t even know where to start.”

“Are you open to a recommendation?” the woman asked.

“Sure.” Aster dropped the book into the slot.

The woman smiled. “Meet me at the checkout desk in ten minutes.”

Aster browsed aimlessly while the woman got her jobs done. She picked out two other books to replenish her reading pile at home. Eventually, she wandered over to the checkout desk, where the woman was standing, a book on the counter in front of her. Aster slid her chosen books towards the woman, along with her library card, and then examined the one that woman had chosen. It was a hardcover, with an off-white jacket. The centrepiece of the jacket design was a jewelled butterfly, capped with a precious stone.

“It’s not a love story,” the woman said, as she scanned the books through. “But it made me feel similar to  _ Like Water for Chocolate _ .”

Aster pushed the book towards the woman. “Then I’ll read it,” she said.

The woman smiled as she scanned the book. She placed the three books in a pile, with Aster’s library card on top, and handed them to Aster.

Aster could feel the woman’s eyes on her as she returned her library card to her purse, and then she packed the books in her tote bag. She looked up at the woman, met her warm brown eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” the woman said. “Enjoy.”

The first thing Aster did when she reached her apartment was to take a shower. And then, in comfortable clothes, with a mug of hot chocolate on her coffee table, she folded herself onto the couch and cracked open the book that the woman at the library had recommended to her. It began with an epigraph by Charles Dickens:  _ Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration _ .

Aster snapped the book shut. She looked out the kitchen window, taking a few deep breaths. Her fingers traced the edge of the book cover. She took a deep breath. Skipped past the epigraph, onto the first chapter.

* * *

Choosing to live in the basement apartment had been a good decision. She was more removed from campus life, but there were advantages to not living in a dorm. Aster liked having a bathroom to herself, she liked the quiet living room area after a hectic day at school or at work. She liked having the option to cook for herself, but she also liked being welcome for meals upstairs. She could also come and go as she pleased. Her uncle and aunt trusted her and treated her like an adult, and as long as she turned up every morning to join them for Sunday mass, they didn’t pry into her life like she was sure her parents would have done.

Aster worked twice a week at the local grocery store, walkable from the apartment, on Saturday mornings and on Thursday evenings. She preferred it to waitressing, and she didn't look forward to having to start doing that again at home in the summer. Sometimes Aster allowed herself to dream of staying in Boston instead of going to Squahamish. She would stay on at the grocery store. She would go on road trips with Jaime and Clara. She would look after her cousins so her tio and tia could get a bit of a break. Maybe she would go see her mom’s family in Springfield.

Sometimes she was ashamed of the feeling. She tamped down the impulses and pretended she had never entertained them in the first place.

* * *

Ellie’s essay in the  _ S&B _ , entitled “My First American Thanksgiving”, was mentioned in  _ Eater’s  _ weekly roundup, causing it to make the social media rounds. It wasn’t quite viral material, but they thought of it as a quirky, thoughtful piece about what it meant to be an immigrant in America. Aster saw the piece linked in the private Facebook group for MassArt’s Puerto Rican student association. She had read it before, of course, as soon as it had gotten published, so she read the comments that people had written on the post, largely about how relatable it was. She shared the link on her group chat with Jaime and Clara.

_ My friend from back home wrote this _ , she told them.

When she met up with them later that day, after getting out of the studio, the first thing Jaime said was, “Wow, your friend really has strong feelings about that sweet potato casserole.”

“She seems like she’d be a hoot to talk to,” Clara said. “Do you guys talk to each other often?”

“Yeah, we do,” Aster said. “She’s like, the smartest person I know. I don’t know why she didn’t graduate as valedictorian.” She had this urge to tell them about Ellie’s little business back in high school, about how she single-handedly raised the median grades in the teachers’ record books, making it look like Squahamish had the highest-performing English and History departments in the county. Their class valedictorian probably even had a couple of papers that were written by Ellie. Aster remembered hearing about people hiring Ellie, and turned a blind eye to it, with the intention that if Ellie ever got exposed, Aster could just pretend that she never knew about it. But now, Aster couldn’t ever pretend to not know Ellie.

* * *

Aster returned to the library three weeks later, after her shift at the grocery store. She planned to meet Clara and Clara’s girlfriend, Allison, there. They were going to drive out to a classmate’s birthday party together. Aster walked into the library after reading a message from Clara saying that they were sitting in the magazine section. She was heading to the returns slot, but then she spotted the tall woman behind the checkout desk. Aster practically marched towards her.

“I finished  _ Pachinko _ ,” she announced.

The woman looked startled for a second, and then the corners of her lips quirked. “And?”

“Thank you,” Aster said.

“What are you thanking me for?” the woman asked. “I didn’t write the book.”

Aster paused to think about it. “I don’t know.”

“There’s more where that came from,” the woman said. “Have you read Kazuo Ishiguro?”

“Are you kidding?” Aster burst out with a short laugh. “I have  _ all  _ of his books.”

The woman grinned. She had perfectly straight white teeth, Aster noticed. “I gotta hit you with something else, then,” she said. She tapped her hands on the counter, seemingly jogging her memory. “What about -”

“Aster.”

Both of them turned around at the direction of the voice. Standing by the bestsellers section was Allison, who was smiling and waving at Aster.

Aster turned back to the woman. “I have to go,” she said. “I’ll give you my email address.” She gestured blankly with an open hand.

The woman handed her a post-it note and a pen. Aster wrote down her email address and slid it across. She realised that if the woman had remembered the name on her library account, she could have easily looked up Aster’s details, but that hadn’t come up. Instead, the woman folded the post-it note and tucked it in the breast pocket of her navy blue button-down shirt, jostling her lanyard in the process.

With a small wave, Aster walked towards Allison, who was now joined by Clara, both of them watching her. They went to the back corners of the libraries to look at graphic novels, which Clara loved.

“Aster was talking to the cute librarian,” Allison teased.

“Oh, was there  _ flirting _ ?” Clara joined in.

“She just recommended a book to me,” Aster said. She was not going to answer the flirting question. That was going to unleash a whole can of worms that she wasn’t prepared to deal with just yet.

Clara and Allison looked at each other, and then back at Aster. “Flirting,” Clara said.

“Totally flirting,” Allison said.

Aster tried her best to not sound too rankled. “Just get those graphic novels,” she said. “We still need to pick up a birthday card on the way to the party.”

They went to the party and got home late at night, with Aster sober driving for Clara and Allison. Before she got ready for bed, she unpacked her work clothes from her bag. Once she had put the balled up clothes in the hamper, she put her hand in her bag again and realised that she had forgotten to return her books.

The next morning, she woke up to an email of a list of books. Some of them Aster had read before, and the rest were familiar titles that she told herself she meant to read, if she found the time. It was signed by a Sam Wilkins. Under Sam’s name was a phone number. Aster was struck in between two peculiar feelings. She knew what to do next, but didn’t know if she wanted to do it.

* * *

Spring came. The sophomore art showcase was held at the college. Aster put on her best casual dress, her denim jacket, and mingled with the crowds of family, friends, professors, and some industry professionals. She stood by where her work was displayed and talked about it to people who asked, and then she walked around to look at other students’ work. She stopped by Jaime’s and Clara’s displays, congratulating them and greeting their families.

Aster sent a few photos off to her family, and some to Ellie and Paul. She didn’t check her phone again until she tucked herself into bed. She scrolled through Instagram, liking photos from the showcase, and then automatically tapped on the magnifying glass icon. Predictably, the Explore page was filled with posts from the showcase. Aster scrolled down and saw a photo of someone who looked like Ellie. She tapped on it, taking her to a post from someone she understood to be Ellie’s friend Jordan. 

The photo was of Ellie, slouched in a cosy cafe armchair, smiling shyly at the camera. She was wearing the maroon sweater that Aster liked. The caption read:  _ So proud of this amazing girl for not only receiving an endowment scholarship, but for also being named the Features Editor for the S&B for the next academic year. Well done, babe! _

_ Babe _ ? Aster sat up in bed. She raked a hand through her hair and read the caption again. And again. Ellie had messaged her about the scholarship, which was going to fully pay for her final two years at Grinnell, and she had told her about getting the position at the newspaper, and Aster knew enough about algorithms and app permissions to surmise how the post may have shown up on her Instagram feed. But “babe”? What did that mean? Was Jordan the kind of friend who just casually called her friends that?

Against her better judgement, Aster went onto Jordan’s Instagram profile. Up until this point, she had not felt the inclination to look at Ellie’s friends’ social media accounts, feeling satisfied about Ellie’s stories about them. She found quite a number of posts about Ellie on Jordan’s Instagram, including one on Valentine’s Day. Ellie was sitting on a bed, working on her laptop, her hair in a messy ponytail.  _ My Funny Valentine _ , the caption read, punctuated by a heart eyes emoji.

It was already April. Ellie talked about Jordan often, but never mentioned that they were dating. Aster never thought to ask. Had Ellie ever indicated that she wanted to be asked about Jordan? Perhaps the signs were there and Aster just ignored them.

She switched from Instagram to WhatsApp. She debated on whether she should ask Ellie about it, but settled on reading back on their messages instead. Earlier that night, Aster had sent her photos of the paintings she displayed in the showcase. She hadn’t shown them to Ellie when they were just works in progress, often reminding her that she needed to be patient, and that these paintings were pretty special, so that Aster didn’t want to ruin the process. One of them was a rendering of the hot springs back in Squahamish. She had sent it to Ellie, hoping that Ellie would bring up the memory. Embarrassment flooded through Aster’s veins. She turned off her phone screen and all but tossed the phone in the drawer of her bedside table, where she knew it wasn’t going to bother her until morning.

* * *

“Ellie has a girlfriend,” Aster stated to Paul.

“Yeah, Jordan,” Paul said. “She’s really nice.”

“You met her?”

“Yeah, on video chat a couple of times.” On her laptop screen, Paul’s face rearranged itself into a pixelated frown. “You haven’t?”

Aster shook her head. “I didn’t even know they were dating,” she said.

“Oh.” Paul stroked his chin. “I thought she had told you. I didn’t think to ask.”

“It’s fine, Paul,” Aster said.

“I hope she introduces Jordan to you soon, though,” Paul said. “I think you’ll like her.”

Aster nodded. “I’m sure she will.”

* * *

Ellie called Aster later that week. They talked about college. They talked about the profile of the religious studies professor that Ellie had written for the  _ S&B _ . Aster told Ellie about the people who had bought her work at the showcase. They swapped Netflix recommendations.

Eventually, the discussion moved onto their plans for the summer. Aster’s parents had booked her tickets for as soon as the semester finished. “If I was still living in the dorm, it would be hectic, but since I don’t have to pack the apartment up, it should be okay,” she said.

“I won’t be back until two weeks after you,” Ellie said.

“Oh, your semester doesn’t finish that much later than mine, does it?” Aster asked.

Ellie was silent for a moment. Aster thought she had cut out. For a moment, she wished she could see her. They didn’t video chat, preferring old-fashioned voice calls instead—as old-fashioned as it could get through WhatsApp. Ellie spoke, “No. I’m just going to spend a few days in Chicago before coming back home.”

“Chicago.” Aster swallowed. “With Jordan.”

“Yeah, with Jordan,” Ellie said. “And a couple of others, too. But we’re staying at Jordan’s place.”

“You’re, uh,” Aster pinched the bridge of her nose, “are you and Jordan, like, dating?”

“Uh, yeah.” Ellie paused. “It’s pretty new.”

Aster wanted to tell Ellie that she saw the Instagram posts. It was  _ May _ . If Jordan had posted about her on Valentine’s Day, then it wasn’t new. She wanted so badly to demand an explanation for what kind of timeline Ellie was operating under. Instead, she said, “Oh, I figured you liked her.”

“How?” Ellie asked.

“You talk about her all the time,” Aster said.

* * *

Back in Sacramento, Aster, her little sister, and her cousins would take the school bus back to her cousins’ house after school. Aster and her sister waited for their parents to finish work there. Her cousins’ house was just up the road from a park with a playground, so Aster, as the eldest of this group of cousins, would volunteer to take them all down. She had relished in the responsibility. She would push them on swings and help them off slides. It was one of the things she missed the most after moving to Squahamish.

Tio Matthew and Tia Julia had three children: Sylvia, a high school freshman who already dreamed of Harvard Law, Michael, a quiet sixth-grader who only showed intent focus towards his Nintendo Switch, and Jasper, in fourth grade, sporty with a mischievous streak. The age gaps were bigger between her and these cousins than they were with her cousins in Sacramento, but Aster loved being around them all the same.

One Saturday, Tia Julia was determined to get the kids out of the house, as she had planned to deep clean their bedrooms, and didn’t trust them not to make a mess of the living room, which she had just deep cleaned. Aster returned from her shift at the grocery store. She asked Tia Julia for the keys to her minivan and volunteered to take her cousins to the library.

“Are you sure?” Tia Julia asked.

They looked at the kids together. Sylvia was putting her shoes on and babbling about what books she wanted to check out. Michael  _ already  _ had his shoes on, but his gaze was still fixed downwards at his Switch. Jasper was barely dressed, running around the house in nothing but his underwear and a pair of socks.

“I think I can manage,” Aster said.

Tia Julia managed to extract the Switch from Michael’s hands, and took another twenty minutes to get Jasper dressed and in the car. She waved at them from the front step as Aster reversed out of their short driveway.

Standing near the library entrance, fixing a display, was Sam Wilkins. Aster stopped in her tracks as Jasper zoomed off to the kids’ section. It was fine. She would find him later. Michael trailed off after him at half the speed. Sylvia, ever obedient, stayed standing beside Aster.

“Hey.” Sam turned around, gave Aster a half-salute. “You finally coming to get those books?” She was wearing a mustard sweater that contrasted nicely with her dark skin, khaki pants cuffed enough to show off reddish brown ankle boots.

It was at that moment that Aster was rather struck by how attractive Sam was. Or rather, how attractive she  _ found  _ Sam. “Hey,” was all she could say.

“Excuse me,” Sylvia spoke up. “Do you have any recommendations for any teen nonfiction books about the electoral college?”

Sam looked down at Sylvia. Literally looked  _ down  _ at her, as Sylvia barely came up to her chest. “Your little sister?” she asked Aster.

Aster shook her head. “Cousin,” she said.

“Third cousin,” Sylvia said seriously. "A ninth-grade level text would be fine, but I tested for a reading age of eighteen, so I can handle it."

“All right,” Sam said. “Come to the computer with me, will you? We might be able to find something in the catalogue.” She smiled and nodded at Aster, before leading Sylvia to one of the computers they used to search books.

Aster went to see where the boys went. She found them in the kids’ section at the back of the library. Jasper was rolling around on the floor, in between a cluster of beanbags, while Michael was poring over a book about computers. Sylvia joined them a few minutes later, with Sam in tow, and Aster watched as they searched for books together. She could hear Sam patiently explaining the Dewey call numbers to Sylvia. They came away with four books from their search. Sylvia sat down next to Michael and opened one of the books immediately.

Sam sat down beside Aster.

“Did she even say thank you?” Aster asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “Look how excited she is.”

“I’ll remind her later.” Aster was conscious of how close Sam was to her. She smelled like mint and something slightly citrusy.

Sam shook her head. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Are you babysitting them for the afternoon?”

“Kind of,” Aster said. “I live with them while I go to college here.”

“Oh? Where are you originally from?” Sam asked.

“Washington State,” Aster said. “But I was born in Sacramento and we lived there until I finished middle school. How about you?”

“Born and bred in Boston,” Sam said. “Hey, you didn’t reply to my email.”

“I was busy with school,” Aster said. “Sorry.”

Sam shrugged. “That’s okay, I understand. I just gave you a list of books and my name.” She had, purposely or not, omitted the fact that she had also included her number. “I think we’ve got some of those books on the shelves right now. Do you want me to go pick them up for you? They’ll be at the counter when you get ready to check out.”

“Uh, sure,” Aster said.

“Okay,” Sam said. She stood up, smoothing down the front of her pants.

“You give everyone this kind of personalised service?” Aster asked.

Sam shook her head. “Nah, just you,” she said, before walking away.

When the kids finally had enough of the library, Aster gathered them up and took them to the checkout desk, where sure enough, Sam was waiting for them. Aster let Sylvia and Michael go first, and then they waited with Jasper by the door while Sam scanned the books she had chosen for Aster.

“Thank you,” Aster said, as she packed them in her tote bag.

“You’re very welcome,” Sam said.

The next words out of Aster’s mouth were not the ones she expected: “Can I text you later?”

Sam smiled at her again. Aster nearly sighed at the sight of those teeth. “Sure thing.”

By the end of that day, they had arranged to meet for coffee the following afternoon.

* * *

Sam was older than Aster. At the beginning of last summer, she had graduated from UMass Boston. She had been on a partial athletic scholarship for basketball. During the off-season, she had a part-time job at the university library, and this, combined with the drudgery of her college readings, turned her into an avid reader of fiction. But what interested Sam the most was how libraries organised and classified the pieces of information that they had. She managed to get a full-time job at the public library, with the intention of learning more about these systems.

Boston was in Sam’s veins. When she met Aster for coffee, after Aster’s Sunday lunch with her family, she took her to Dunkin’. Mainly as a joke, but Aster didn’t miss the sparkle in Sam’s eyes as she took her iced coffee from the guy behind the counter.

On a different weekend, they walked around the Public Garden, enjoying the blooms of spring—though Aster didn’t miss how Sam had popped an antihistamine tablet while Aster was getting in her car—and Sam teased Aster as she took dozens of photos of flowers, for references for her next painting.

“It makes sense,” Sam had said. “Anyone ever point out to you that your name is literally Flower Flowers?” 

“Shut up,” Aster had retorted lamely, a blush rising to her cheeks.

They had found themselves at the Granary Burying Ground, weaving through the hordes of families taking advantage of the fine spring day by congregating around the graves of historical figures. Sam took Aster around the graves of the lesser known, and together, they invented exciting lives for these people.

At the end of that afternoon, Sam dropped Aster off on her street. She turned off the engine and got out of her car the same time Aster did. They stood on the sidewalk, looking at each other. “I had a really nice time,” Aster said.

“Me too,” Sam said. She opened her arms.

Aster stepped into them. She felt Sam’s arms wrap against her shoulders. Sam was significantly taller than her, so Aster’s forehead was level with her chin. Sam tilted her head so that Aster’s rested against her neck. Aster wrapped her arms around Sam’s torso. Sam was soft everywhere, and yet sturdy at the same time. Aster was conscious of Sam’s breasts against her own body. She broke the hug off, long enough but perhaps too soon, and cleared her throat.

One Tuesday evening, Sam met her just outside the MassArt campus, after she had finished work at the studio. They hugged again. Sam, wearing a plain indigo t-shirt under a light wash denim jacket, looked good, as always. Aster wondered if it was ever hard for her, being a tall, broad African-American girl, but Sam had a gift for never looking out of place.

As planned, they were going to track down some food trucks. They had a rough schedule in place: lighter food first, then moving to heavier fare later on. They also had a rule that they could quit and call it a night at any time. They traversed the city. They started with the taco trucks, then the hot dogs, then the rice bowls, and eventually, the grilled sandwiches. On their way back home, they stopped by a small grocery store, not unlike the one Aster worked in, and Aster bought bottles of iced green tea for her and Sam. They sipped these on the subway back to ease the bloating in their stomachs.

They got off the nearest subway stop to Sam’s apartment, where her car was parked. Sam drove her home. She parked on Aster’s street, right by a tree. Aster had discovered that its branches, with the leaves in full bloom, conveniently blocked out the view of the street from her tio and tia’s house. It was a good place to park a car after a good date.

“Thank you for tonight,” Sam said.

“Thank you, too,” Aster said.

Sam unbuckled her seatbelt. It swished back into its reel. “Can I kiss you goodnight?” she asked.

The streetlight was the only thing that was illuminating them, casting fluorescent shards on their faces and bodies.

Aster looked at Sam. Sam must have felt the weight of Aster’s gaze on her, because she laughed nervously, flashing her perfect teeth. This time, Aster allowed herself to sigh. “Yes,” she breathed. She clicked her seatbelt loose.

Sam was still smiling when she leaned forward, gently cupping Aster’s face with one hand, bracing herself on the dashboard with the other. Aster met her halfway. Sam’s lips were warm and chapped, tasting of a multitude of things they had consumed over the course of the evening. A pleasurable feeling bloomed from Aster’s stomach into her chest as they kissed.

When they separated, Aster blurted out, “I’ve been thinking about that for a while.”

“Same here,” Sam said.

Aster glanced at the clock on Sam’s dashboard. “Can we do it again?”

It turned out that she didn’t have to ask Sam twice.

* * *

Clara’s voice was singsongy: “Aster’s got a girlfriend!”

They were hanging out in Jaime’s room. Jaime was tinkering with a digital design on his computer, while Clara was flipping through Spotify on his iPad, playing random songs. Aster was on Jaime’s bed, her legs raised, feet up against the wall.

Jaime didn’t look up from his screen. “That still  _ blows  _ my mind,” he said.

“I don’t understand why,” Aster said. “I never really talk about dating.”

“Yeah, were you just making  _ assumptions _ ?” Clara asked him. “ _ Bro _ , deprogram your mind from the heteronormative mindset.”

“I’m trying,” Jaime said.

“Anyway, I don’t know if she’s my girlfriend yet,” Aster said. “Isn’t that something you have to make official?” She remembered the whole song and dance—quite literally—that Trig went through to ask her to be his girlfriend.

“Why don’t you just ask her?” Clara asked.

“That’s scary,” Aster said.

“I agree,” Jaime said.

Clara glared at Jaime. “It’s not my problem that you’re a commitmentphobe, Jaime,” she said to him. And then she turned to address Aster. “Well, do you want her to be your girlfriend?”

Aster thought about it. Sam was earnest and gentle, and she had her life together, not because it was  _ given  _ to her, but because she worked hard for it. She had a way of making Aster feel safe. “Yeah, I guess I do,” she said.

“Then you gotta be the one to make it official, if she hasn’t already,” Clara said. “No point in waiting around for her to do it.” She jabbed at Jaime’s iPad screen emphatically. “This is what it’s like, in relationships between women. I know Sam’s your first -”

“I’ve kissed a girl before,” Aster interrupted.

“I meant like, a girlfriend,” Clara said. “But do tell us more about all the girls you’ve kissed.”

Jaime shut his laptop. “Oh, I want to hear about this one,” he said. “Here I was assuming that handsome Sam is the one who awakened your sapphic senses.”

“I kissed Ellie, the summer before freshman year,” Aster said. 

Jaime’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Ellie, like your friend Ellie?”

“Sweet potato casserole Ellie?” Clara asked.

“You  _ kissed  _ her?” Jaime asked. “Like, deliberately?”

“Well, technically she kissed me,” Aster said. She was finding that she was saying things out loud for the first time recently. The memory of her kiss with Ellie was forever fresh in her head, leaving her with no doubt that it was  _ real _ , but she hadn’t talked about it with anyone. Not with Paul. Not even with Ellie herself.

“Oh, so she liked you,” Jaime said.

Aster shrugged. “I guess she did.”

“She  _ kissed  _ you, Aster, there’s no guessing about it,” Jaime said.

Clara’s question was quieter: “Did you like her back?”

There was no straightforward answer to that. Aster liked Ellie when she had been pretending to be Paul. When the jig was up, Aster’s feelings became muddied with hurt and confusion. “I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly, at that point, everything was a bit messy, with graduation and my boyfriend at the time and college applications, so I didn’t really give myself the time to figure it out. Then Ellie went to Grinnell, and I came here…”

“And then Sam came along,” Clara offered.

“Yeah. Sam,” Aster said. “Anyway, that’s all in the past now. I’m just happy that Ellie’s my friend.” She meant that, too.

“Damn, Flores.” Clara stretched out on Jaime’s floor. “You were the last person I thought who’d have some dyke drama.”

* * *

Later that night, Aster lay in bed. She stared at her phone screen, where her message thread with Sam was opened.

_ Are we _ , she began to type. She paused and hit backspace.  _ Do you want to be _ , she started, then hit backspace again.

_ Am I your girlfriend?  _ She pressed send.

Sam replied immediately.  _ That depends. Do you want to be my girlfriend? _

_ Yes. _

Sam responded with a smiley face emoji, followed by,  _ Then I guess you’re my girlfriend. _ And then another message:  _ Am I yours? _ with the emoji where its tongue was sticking out.

In her bed, Aster laughed.  _ Duh _ , she typed.

_ Guess that makes it official, then _ , Sam wrote.

Aster fell asleep with a smile on her face.

* * *

School was finishing for the year, and so Aster was counting down the days until she had to make the trip back to Squahamish. 

Everyone knew that Aster was going to be back by August, but it was hard to say goodbye anyway. Things have changed. Unlike last year, when everyone was packing up their dorm rooms, making it look like they hadn’t lived there at all, Aster was the only one leaving. Perhaps even worse still, she had built something around her. Something visible and alive and tactile. She had stuff to leave behind. There was a small sense of satisfaction felt over leaving her winter clothes in her apartment closet, only packing her summer clothing, a few books, and her art supplies. But still, she had an  _ apartment  _ to leave. There was that throw blanket she had bought on sale from Target, the plates and mugs that Tia Julia had picked out for her, the succulent plants that she had to entrust in Sylvia’s care…

And then there were the people.

Sylvia had taken to sulking at the thought of Aster being away for the summer. According to her parents, she talked a lot about Aster to her friends at school, and vocally wished that Aster would stay over the summer. Sylvia loved the idea of having a big sister figure that she could introduce to her friends. Michael and Jasper were less attached to Aster, though Jasper had taken to cuddling Aster after dinners, when she would sit in the living room with them and watch some Netflix.

Jaime and Clara would both be working full-time at Jaime’s family bakery during the break. They planned to do short road trips in and around Massachusetts during their free days, and Jaime lamented at having to act as a third wheel for Clara and Allison. It could have been so easy for Aster, to just delay going back, so she could have the chance to make these memories with her friends. But Squahamish still called her back, for various reasons.

It was particularly hard to say goodbye to Sam. Sam knew a bit about Aster’s family, and the situation she was in at home, and she was understanding about it. They promised to talk to each other when they could. On the last night they saw each other, Sam invited her over to her apartment. She cooked dinner for the two of them, and then they made out on her couch until she had to drive Aster home. Aster found Sam intoxicating. Part of her thought she was so silly, to try long-distance so soon after a relationship started, but she wanted to believe that Sam was worth it. Even as she locked her apartment door behind her, she already couldn’t wait for August, when she would see Sam again.

The morning after school finished, Tio Matthew and Sylvia took Aster to the airport. The whole family had been outside to watch them pack the car. She hugged Tia Julia and the boys goodbye. At the airport drop-off zone, Sylvia clung onto Aster and took her time letting go. It was only when Aster had made it inside the building that she noticed that she had been silently crying.

* * *

Paul, adorably, had plenty of grand plans for when Aster and Ellie arrived back out west. He suggested going on a road trip at some point, either east to Spokane, or even west to Seattle. In his words, he wanted to “take the taco sausage on the road”. Paul’s successful first year of apprenticeship was coming to a close, and the butcher was planning on giving him some time off as a reward.

None of these road trips happened, as Ellie was busy at the grocery store, and Aster was busy at the restaurant. They would meet up in the evenings, often finding Paul cooking with Ellie’s dad, and then after dinner, they would leave him to go off for a drive together, taking advantage of the late sunsets. He had to return to Wenatchee eventually.

Aster worked, read, painted. She spent time with her sister, getting ice cream, or going to the movies. She messaged Jaime and Clara throughout the day and kept up with their summer adventures on Instagram. She called Sam most afternoons, and called Tio Matthew and his family on the weekends. On Sundays, she went to mass with her family. Her dad had stopped quizzing her, probably assured by her faith through her physical presence in his home and his congregation. Aster hid from him the books that she had brought home with her, which she read at night until her eyes were sore.

_ Introducing Liberation Theology _ .  _ Jesus and the Disinherited. The Queer God. _

When she spent time with Ellie, they talked with newfound confidence. Their minds were as sharp as ever, bolstered by knowledge and language they had learned from two years in college. They shared their work with each other. Aster showed Ellie her paintings. Ellie let her read drafts of essays that she was working on. They threw ideas around, debated what worked and what didn’t. They went to the hot springs and listened to music, attaching each song to a memory.

Ellie had a new haircut, and new clothes. She had even started wearing shorts. Aster tried her best not to comment on any of these changes.

Ellie talked a lot about Jordan. Aster said nothing about Sam. 

It felt like Aster had two lives: one in Boston, and one in Squahamish.

So when she had the opportunity to return to Boston earlier than planned, she took it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear, it's been a while, hasn't it? I started writing this thing in lockdown and then life started back up for me again, so it fell by the wayside, while I was playing catch-up at work. I hope things are going well on your side of the world. Leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

It was just after the Fourth of July when Ellie received a bunch of emails in her inbox. They were from various publications that she had submitted her essays to. All rejections. A handful of them said something along the lines of,  _ We’d like to see more of your work _ . 

She didn’t look at her laptop for the rest of the day. Writing guaranteed A-grade essays for the kids in high school didn’t prepare her for having her work scrutinised by seasoned industry professionals. Work that was, for once, intensely personal. Ellie wrote about her life and she sent it off to be criticised. Six different takes on Plato was a piece of cake.  _ Real  _ writing? She exposed too much for such little reward.

Feeling bummed, she called Jordan on the phone. When they hung up, and Ellie emerged from her room for food, her dad looked at her expectantly.

“That’s Jordan?” he asked. “Your…” he cleared his throat, but didn’t finish his sentence.

“My girlfriend, Ba,” Ellie said in English.

“You’re together.” Her dad nodded. “What’s she like?”

Ellie relaxed a little. “She’s kind, she’s smart, she thinks about things a lot,” she said, in Chinese. “Here.” She tapped on her phone, and then crossed the tiny living room to stand next to her dad. She showed her a photo of Jordan, outside one of the dining halls in Grinnell, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her white jacket. She had been smiling ruefully at Ellie.

“Ah, she’s Chinese,” her dad said, frowning, as if admonishing her for not mentioning this before.

“Yes,” Ellie said. Her dad asked a few more questions about Jordan’s family. Where they were from in China. What her parents did for a living. What Jordan did at school. Eventually, he seemed to be satisfied. He stepped out onto the landing and took the broom and dustpan, then headed downstairs.

Later that evening, he put on their ancient VHS tape of  _ Space Jam.  _ When Michael Jordan came on screen, her dad pointed at him and grinned.

* * *

“The more I study art, the less I understand it,” Aster had admitted to her, one sticky evening. It was unusually humid in Squahamish, and they were sitting outside the station, anticipating the evening train. Ellie’s dad had long resumed his responsibilities as the station manager, but when Ellie was home, she still liked doing the occasional train, for old times’ sake.

“What do you mean?” Ellie prompted.

“I feel like it’s so inaccessible,” Aster said. “It’s not for the common people, you know. Here in Squahamish, hardly anyone knows about Degas or Manet or Vermeer, and it’s not their fault. It’s not really something on their radar. So I have to keep asking myself, when I’m painting something, why am I painting it?”

“Because of self-expression?” Ellie said. “You wanna share your story to the world?”

“I guess, but doing art for yourself is financially unsustainable, really. They say art is easier now, with the internet and Instagram and all that, but really we’ve just returned to this system of like, Renaissance-era patronage again,” Aster said. “Find a rich person who likes your work enough that they buy a piece and give you financial clout… If you don’t find this person, you’re basically screwed.”

Ellie watched Aster work herself into a spiral. Aster was slouched on the bench, her brows knitted together, her arms folded over her chest. Her hair was tied up in a loose bun, exposing her neck, and she was wearing a tank top, though she covered her chest and torso with a denim jacket, hoping to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Two years of college looked good on Aster. Her eyes were brighter, her voice was clearer.

Aster noticed that Ellie had gone quiet. “Sorry, I’m rambling,” she said.

“No, you’re not.” Ellie offered a reassuring smile. “I just don’t know how to respond. I agree with what you’re saying. I don’t know how to fix it,” she said. “I guess I just hope you find something that makes you fall in love with art all over again.”

Exactly three days after that conversation, Ellie checked her phone during a break from work. Aster had sent her a message:  _ Going back to Boston at the end of this week. Jaime, Clara and Allison are going to do an Amtrak trip to New York for the weekend and my parents are letting me go too. _

It hadn’t escaped Ellie’s notice, how Aster talked about Boston. She listened carefully to how Aster used  _ we _ , or  _ us _ , or  _ back there _ , whenever she talked about Boston and her friends there, and how Squahamish was relegated to  _ over here _ , and its people as  _ them  _ or  _ the people here _ . Ellie didn’t know if Aster was aware of how her language had changed. Surely she was; they were both especially attuned to words. Perhaps it was inevitable that they would stop thinking of Squahamish as home, as neither of them fully belonged there anyway. However, Ellie thought she would get there first. Maybe she was sensitive to Aster’s language because she was jealous that Aster was ahead of her.

A few days later, Ellie was on the platform as Aster’s family bade her goodbye. Not even a week after that, Aster sent her photos of Van Gogh, of Picasso, of Monet.

* * *

Ellie stayed in her single room for her third year at Grinnell. At the end of last semester, Ava had invited her to apply with her and a couple of others for an apartment, but that would have involved sharing a bedroom again, which Ellie wasn’t a fan of. She was okay with sharing bathrooms and common areas, but she definitely preferred her own space. Besides, Jordan had a single, too, keeping the same one in the floor below Ellie’s. It was easier to have each other over that way. No roommates, no fuss.

She was finally compelled to declare her major at the end of sophomore year. She chose English, not because it was the one she was most passionate about, but it was the one that let her stay in the same headspace that she needed while she was writing. 

Jordan was the kind of kid that liberal arts colleges were made for. She was comfortably middle class, her family had grown up travelling, and she was raised in an environment where having ambition was natural. She could articulate what she wanted. When prompted, she could go through the steps she needed to get there.

Despite the hiccups of coming out to her parents, Jordan was comfortable with her sexuality. She draped herself over Ellie at trivia nights. She kissed her outside lecture halls, and held her hand around town. When they were hanging out with friends, she would say things like, “Oh, I’m too gay for that,” or, “Thank god I’m a dyke!” in casual conversation. It jarred Ellie, but at the same time, she couldn’t get enough of it.

“How many Chinese kids were in your school?” Ellie had once asked Jordan.

Jordan had been lying down on Ellie’s bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. “Like, a third of the students were Chinese kids,” she had said. “Why?”

Ellie couldn’t even imagine it. Every third kid in school being like her. “Oh, just wondering.”

Jordan had turned her head to look at her. “You’re always thinking about this stuff, aren’t you?”

“Don’t  _ you  _ think about it as well?”

“Hmm.” Jordan had frowned up at the ceiling, and moved her shoulders in an approximation of a shrug. “I don’t know. Should I?” She had propped herself up on her elbows. “I guess I think about it from an academic point of view…”

Ellie had wanted to say that it must be nice for Jordan to have that kind of detachment, but she didn’t want to sound argumentative, so she let it go. When Jordan had beckoned her to bed to “take a break”, she followed.

* * *

At the end of the first properly cold week at Grinnell, Ellie received an email from BuzzFeed. She had pitched a piece to them, upon encouragement from a BuzzFeed writer that she had been DMing on Twitter, and they had finally gotten back to her.

_ That sounds awesome, Ellie. Mind sending it to us in .docx format? _ the email read.

In the very little spare time she had, she worked with an editor to make changes to the piece. Not even a month later, the essay was published online, entitled, “Asian-American in the middle of nowhere”. The editor messaged Ellie the link as soon as it went live. She sent it to Aster first, and then to Paul, and then to Mrs G. Paul had simply replied,  _ That’s so awesome, Ellie!  _ before wondering how well it would go through if he plugged it into Google Translate, so that he could send it to Ellie’s dad. Mrs G told her about printing out copies to leave in the teacher’s lounge, and asked Ellie if it was okay to use it as teaching material for the creative nonfiction unit in Honours English.

Ellie felt warmth at their words. She investigated the Google Translate option. It was capable of translating the words live on the website, but Ellie never learned to read Chinese. She made a mental note to flag down someone who could—her old roommate Hazel, perhaps—to judge on whether the translation worked well enough for her dad.

Aster had called her later that day. “I loved it,” she said. She began to read from it, “ _ All my life in Squahamish I didn’t know what it meant to be Asian-American, this vague, nebulous category that groups together millions of people in this country. In my sociology classes I came to learn that identity is socially constructed. I’m not sure to what degree being called ‘Chinese girl’ counted as construction. Was I Asian-American or was I just different? _ ” She blew out a breath. “ _ Jesus _ , Ellie.”

“Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain,” Ellie said.

“Shush. I can’t believe you’ve taken more religious studies classes than me,” Aster said.

“Christian mythology is interesting,” Ellie said wryly, knowing how much it wound Aster up when she referred to Bible stories as such.

Aster didn’t bite. She praised the piece a bit more, and then conversation turned to her studio work, to her electives about African-American cinema and environmental science. They talked about Halloween and parties they planned on going to.

Ellie’s phone chimed against her ear, in the middle of Aster talking about Jaime and Clara’s Halloween costume plans. She looked at her screen and she read the messages from Jordan, who announced that she was planning to take her out for a celebratory dinner and wanted to meet her in twenty minutes. She held the phone back to her ear. “Hey, Aster, sorry, I just got a message from Jordan, we’re gonna go out to dinner soonish,” she said.

“Oh, right,” Aster said. They said their goodbyes, and Ellie went to get dressed.

* * *

Being published in BuzzFeed gave Ellie a bit of celebrity status on campus, especially among those who regularly read issues of the  _ S&B _ . As features editor, it wasn’t Ellie’s first priority to write. She wrote the occasional piece, but her job was to hear pitches and follow progressions on writing assignments. The features section attracted a mixed bag of pieces, from politically charged ideas to fluffy stuff about diets and social media use, but Ellie was less focused on content than she was about rhetoric and narrative and flair. She worked to get the best out of the writers with whom she worked. She was good at it, too, and one day she may have the courage to admit that she liked it more than writing.

The editor-in-chief of the  _ S&B  _ was a senior history major named Owen, and though he praised the quality of Ellie’s writing, the BuzzFeed essay didn’t impress him as much. One evening, as they worked late on putting together the next issue, he passed by Ellie’s desk with a sheet of paper.

Ellie had been emailing back and forth with someone who had written a piece about finding mindfulness in early morning spin classes. Eyes weary, she looked at the A4 sheet that Owen had just dropped on her desk. It was a press release from a group that called themselves the Grinnell Neurodivergent Students’ Association. “What’s this about?” she asked Owen.

“They want to make a presentation to the administration about adjustments and allowances to be made to the way study works at Grinnell,” Owen said.

“Studying at Grinnell works fine,” Ellie said.

“I know for a fact you’ve never gotten below a B+ on anything since you’ve been here. Of course studying works fine for you,” Owen said. “Anyway, I thought maybe you’d want to write about them.”

“Like an interview? Doesn’t that come under news?” Ellie asked. She jerked her head towards Penny, the news editor, a jittery sophomore who had her giant headphones clamped over her head as she stared at her laptop, no doubt doing a similar task that Ellie was.

Owen smiled at her, as if he knew something that Ellie didn’t. “I want something more in-depth.” He tapped the press release with a finger. “Get in touch with them, work something out, then have something for me for the issue after the next one, maybe?” When Owen said “maybe”, it was closer to “definitely”. He returned to his desk.

The Neurodivergent Students’ Association turned out to be a broadchurch, encompassing students who were on the autism spectrum, students with mental health problems, as well as students with learning or behavioural difficulties. These students had banded together after semesters of feeling misunderstood by Grinnell academic staff, and they advocated for adjustments, ranging from more inclusive pedagogical strategies to special assessment conditions.

Ellie was reflexively resistant to their ideas, such as no-questions-asked extensions for students who had the documentation to prove that they had a condition that affected their productivity, or the requests they made for individual lecturers to change their teaching styles, but the more she talked with them, and the more she researched, she was suddenly encountering a new feeling of privilege. 

Academic rigour had always been a healthy and welcome challenge for Ellie. She even considered some of the work too easy. This was not the case for many of these students, who may have done well enough at school but struggled as soon as they got to Grinnell. The students in the association were ostensibly good enough to cope with Grinnell’s academics, but had been unprepared for the absence of the routine and close supervision that they had in high school.

“Obviously, we’re all adults here and would like to be treated as such,” one of the group’s spokespeople had said. “We recognise the efforts made by those responsible for student health and welfare, but we just wish that when we ask for support, it doesn’t devolve into a bureaucratic nightmare—because that’s what usually happens. It causes unnecessary stress and doesn’t let us perform at our best.”

Ellie wrote the article and emailed it to Owen. When he passed by her desk, the afternoon after she sent it, he was smiling again, in that peculiar, knowing way of his. “Not just a personal essay machine, after all,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve got talent, Ellie,” Owen said. “I don’t want you to keep mining your experiences to write first-person essays for BuzzFeed forever. Good work.”

The article was published in the  _ S&B  _ the following week, right according to Owen’s timeline. Ellie kept a pristine copy of the issue and found a protective sleeve for it at the campus bookstore.

* * *

“I really like how you write, Ellie,” Paul told her, over video chat.

Since her time with the Neurodivergent Students’ Association, Ellie hypothesised that Paul struggled with literacy because he probably had visual processing issues that weren’t noticed at school or at home. Paul could read decently, but there was a reason he avoided novels. When Ellie sent him the article, she also sent him a link to an app that could read the words for him, without explaining the reason why. Paul had then engaged with Ellie’s writing in a way that he never had before. He wrote to Ellie about specific sections of the article, and even contributed his own thoughts, rather than just sending  _ Awesome! _ and  _ Great job! _ with a few emojis scattered in. 

“That app you showed me was really cool,” Paul said. “I can use it for college.”

“How are your classes going anyway?” Ellie asked. 

Paul was getting his associate’s in accounting at the community college in Wenatchee. From how Paul talked about his classes, he was definitely proving better at numbers than words. “I still like butchery and making sausages better,” he said.

“So no chance of doing a whole four years then?”

On the screen, Paul shook his pixelated head. “Nah, my associate’s is enough. School’s hard for me, you know. I don’t want to do more of it if I don’t have to,” he said. “I just need to know enough to work out the numbers for the business back home, to make sure my brothers don’t run it into the ground when ma eventually retires.”

“That’s not for a while yet,” Ellie said.

“Exactly,” Paul said. “But it’s good to be prepared.”

It often took Ellie aback, how grown up Paul was starting to sound. When they first spoke to each other in senior year, on the side of the road, after Paul had unceremoniously yanked at her bike, he was bumbling and unsure of himself. Now, it seemed that he knew where he wanted to go in life. That made one of them.

* * *

One evening, she had managed to find herself dragged along at a public forum hosted by the Debating Union. The organisation had recently announced that they were inviting a “free speech activist” for a talk and panel on campus. To the left-leaning groups at Grinnell, a “free speech activist” was just code for “barely closeted fascist”, and so this triggered a campuswide discussion, which, in true college fashion, prompted the organisation in question to organise a public forum about it, where people could air their grievances.

Jordan, as part of the Queer People of Color organisation, decided that she was going to attend. She had asked Ellie to tag along with her and the other members of her group.

Ellie thought it would be interesting, but quickly found that she felt heated discussion uncomfortable. It was nothing like the conversations they had in class, mediated by a lecturer. There were maybe two hundred people in the room, and the mediator, another kid just like them, could barely control people.

The floor was open to anyone who wanted to express their concern—or less so, their support—for the personality invited on campus. It was really just a bunch of kids expressing the exact same ideas in a dozen different ways, as an attempt to pass as cleverer than they actually were. Ellie knew that she should at least try to appreciate the fruits of the Grinnell education, to acknowledge that a couple of years ago, these kids wouldn’t have even heard of the concepts and the language that they were freely weaponising, but mostly she just felt irritated. The arguments revolved in circles, taking up more time that was necessary. It seemed clear cut to her: it had already been decided, decades ago, before any of them were born, that racism was a bad thing that existed. Why was it suddenly up for debate again?

Conflict, however, was energising to Jordan. When the evening finished, without conclusion or resolution, they strolled out into the chilly autumn evening. Jordan was holding Ellie’s hand, but was talking to her friends, her voice rising with uncomfortably gleeful agitation. She swore, which she did more often than Ellie was accustomed to, and she relished in being wound up. Jordan loved to speak for an audience, no matter how small, and she had the voice for it, too. Colourful and expressive, disproportionally full coming from her small, skinny physique. Even Ellie couldn’t help but listen to her, even if she was just rehashing the arguments.

Jordan’s friends dispersed to their different residence halls, leaving Ellie and Jordan walking the rest of the way alone.

“What do you think they’re gonna do?” Jordan asked.

“Hmm?”

“The Debating Union,” Jordan clarified. “Do you think they’re still gonna go ahead with it?”

“I don’t see why they wouldn’t,” Ellie said.

“But do you think that they should?”

Ellie sighed inwardly. She had just watched an hour and a half of this conversation, and had no desire to contribute to it herself. “We’ve all got freedom of speech, haven’t we? That guy can come if he wants to, or if the Debating Union wants him to, and we’ve got every right to protest his presence on campus, too,” she said. “Isn’t that what he’s fighting for?”

Jordan thought about it. She squeezed Ellie’s hand. “Yeah, you’re right, I guess,” she said. “I should set up a meeting with the QPOC group for next steps, then.” She smiled at Ellie. “I’m not gonna ask you to come along. I know you’re a  _ journalist  _ and everything, it wouldn’t be impartial of you.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, though she didn’t feel like much of a journalist, “it wouldn’t be.”

On the landing of Jordan’s floor, she kissed Ellie goodnight. Against Ellie’s lips, she whispered, “I love you.” It was the first time she had said it. It was the first time Ellie had heard it from anyone who wasn’t her mom.

Ellie just kissed her again, and then proceeded to make her way up the stairs.

* * *

_ I love you _ . She frequently heard them shrieked through hallways between groups of girls. Back in senior year, Paul dropped the words in his usual earnest way, and it jarred Ellie because although she knew them, she couldn’t quite fathom how invested one had to be to feel compelled to say them. Her mom, when she was still alive, said it rarely, and not even when she was dying. Her dad never said it at all. The words were funny in Ellie’s own mouth, only having said them on the rare occasion she had to read them out loud, maybe in a book for English class. Love, if it was anything, was demonstrative.

It was a cooler of dumplings for a six-day journey, when there was no money to spare for a flight. It was clumsy honesty in the middle of Sunday mass. It was keeping a schedule unfit for a growing teenager just to make sure the trains ran smoothly.

Ellie thought about how Jordan would often bring her a coffee, or how, when they were in a communal study space, Jordan would make sure they had snacks, and both their water bottles were filled, without making a big song and dance about it. How when they went out to eat in town, she would always let Ellie take her preferred seat, the one facing the door. How Jordan would wake up after they had fallen asleep together, tidy up their jumbled study notes, and then tuck them both into bed.

That was how Ellie believed that Jordan did love her. As for reciprocation, that wasn’t so clear cut.

* * *

The topic came up when Ellie was on the phone with her dad. They talked on the phone once or twice a week, the conversations not lasting more than fifteen minutes. It was easier than a text conversation, because Ellie didn’t know how to write in Chinese, and her dad struggled to write in English, though he could read it just fine. Ellie texted him once every day and he would usually just reply with a thumbs up emoji, but he had been changing it up lately, clearly influenced by Paul. The short phone calls sufficed because they didn’t have much to talk about anyway. Ellie knew that her dad just trusted her to do her best and behave well while she was away from home.

“How did you know that you loved Mom?” Ellie asked.

Her dad took so long to reply that Ellie started to think that the signal had cut out, if it wasn’t for the sound of his breathing. “Your mom was the smartest girl in the neighbourhood, just like you. The other guys, they didn’t give her a second look because they thought she was just gonna boss them around,” he began. “Just as well. It meant that they didn’t see exactly how beautiful she was.”

Ellie sighed. “So she was pretty and smart,” she said. “Love at first sight? This isn’t one of your movies, Dad.”

“Okay,” her dad said in English, before continuing on in Mandarin. “When we first got into a relationship, I admit that I wasn’t being very prudent. It was the last year of my masters degree, and I was hoping to get the grades for the PhD programme. I wasn’t sleeping very well, I was grouchy most of the time.”

“I can’t imagine you being grouchy.” Ellie knew her dad had never been the most talkative guy, even when her mom was still alive, but he had a gentle sense of humour, and even when he was still coming to terms with the fact that Squahamish was  _ the  _ destination of their American dream, he never showed any anger or bitterness.

“Oh, I was. Usually it would go away when I was spending time with your mom, but then crunch time came along and I was starting to take all that stress with me when I was with her,” he said.

“So what did she do?”

“She let me know that she wouldn’t put up with it, and that if I had any problems, we should be dealing with it together, and that I shouldn’t take it out on her.” Ellie could hear her dad smile at the memory. “When she was telling me off, it was when I realised that I loved her. I apologised, and then I took her back to her apartment and went home myself, gave her some space to cool off. A week after that, I asked her to come over. I made her braised pork and rice.”

“I always thought that that was her dish,” Ellie said, surprised.

“No, no, the first time we ate braised pork together, I was the one who made it. Actually, it wasn’t until we moved to America that  _ she  _ was the one who started making it more often, because I was too busy trying to learn enough English so I could understand my bosses,” her dad said. “Anyway, she ate her braised pork and rice in silence, then before she reached for a second helping, guess what she did?”

“What?” Ellie held her breath.

“She told me she loved me.”

* * *

On the bus to Chicago for Thanksgiving break, Ellie and Jordan sat next to each other. Jordan, who was prone to motion sickness, had taken Dramamine before they left Grinnell, and it had made her a little groggy, so she slept for a bit, her head slumped forward. When she woke up, she looked a little more alert.

Ellie offered her some almonds from a small container.

“No thanks,” Jordan said. She rested her head on Ellie’s shoulder.

Ellie tucked her almonds back into her backpack. “Hey, Jordan?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you not upset at me?” Ellie asked.

Jordan didn’t lift her head from Ellie’s shoulder. “Why would I be upset at you?”

“That night after we went to that Debating Union thing. And you said,” Ellie swallowed, “you said you loved me. And I didn’t say it back.”

“Hmm.” Jordan straightened in her seat and turned her head, so that she and Ellie were making eye contact. “It made me a bit sad, to be honest, but then I thought about it, and it isn’t really your thing, is it?”

“What?”

“Saying things out loud,” Jordan said. She clasped her hand over Ellie’s. “At this point in time, I don’t think I need to hear it to feel it, you know? How you feel about me and all… I guess, that night, I just wanted to let you know where I was at.”

Something blossomed in Ellie’s chest then. How beautiful, how easy it was to have someone like Jordan, who did her best to rationalise even what was irrational. She rotated her hand and laced their fingers together.

* * *

As an only child, sibling dynamics had long intrigued Ellie. As the only child of immigrants, Ellie had grown up self-sufficient and capable of entertaining herself. It also meant that she had an outsized sense of responsibility, as the sole beneficiary of her parents’ punt at the American dream. The only other only child she knew of in Squahamish was Trig Carson, wearer of cashmere, heir to Carson Gravel, and it was obvious how he turned out. Paul’s exceptional social astuteness, coupled with an inferiority complex, was from being the fourth Munsky son, the last before a long-awaited daughter. The classic, firm-but-encouraging big sister vibe sparked through Aster.

Jordan’s older sisters were high-achieving and not shy about it. They relentlessly ribbed Jordan and good-naturedly quizzed her on her accomplishments, or relative lack thereof. Her eldest sister was twenty-eight and a property lawyer, while her middle sister was twenty-five and was in the middle of her doctorate in public health. Their conversation was sharp but rarely hurtful, though one had to have thick skin to be able to keep up with them. And in her second Thanksgiving with them—and her first as Jordan’s girlfriend—Ellie was inevitably placed in their hot seat.

Unfortunately for Ellie, Jordan had gone with her mother to fetch her grandfather from his home in a different neighbourhood.

“So, Ellie, are you thinking of writing for a living?” the middle sister asked.

Ellie wanted to shrug, but shrugging was not an appropriate gesture to make around Jordan’s sisters. They were like sharks. “I don’t know yet. I’ve got time to figure it out, I hope,” she said.

“You should look into internships for the summer, in a magazine or in general publishing. There’ll be plenty in New York and Chicago,” the eldest sister—the more practical one, according to Jordan—said. “I mean, hundreds of kids apply for them, but you might have a leg up since you’ve built up a bit of a legitimate profile online.”

“I don’t know if I can really afford to do those internships,” Ellie said.

“How about out west? In Portland or Seattle?” the eldest sister suggested.

“All cities are expensive.” Ellie was sounding almost apologetic, and felt embarrassed about it. She didn’t know why she was so eager to prove herself as a competent human being—though being fully aware that being able to afford an unpaid or stipend-only internship in a big city was only an indicator of privilege and not of competence—to Jordan’s sisters. She had been around people who were smarter and just as accomplished before, but she had never felt this need to impress any of them.

“So is that gonna be your beat, then?” the middle sister asked, saying “beat” like it was a dirty word. “Life in culturally-confused middle America?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘culturally-confused’,” Ellie said. “It’s just a different formation of identity.”

The middle sister, who Ellie was discovering was the more confrontational one, gestured between herself and the eldest. “We both grew up as odd kids. It wasn’t until Jordan was coming through school that the local schools here had more Chinese kids, and even the couple years’ difference was stark,” she said.

“Yeah, but you had other Chinese kids in your class, didn’t you?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah.”

“Chinese teachers?”

“Two or three,” the middle sister conceded.

“You guys were born here. Your parents were born here. The roots your family has put down in this place were deep. My family… we just got here,” Ellie said. “You know, I didn’t eat Chinese takeout until I moved to Grinnell.”

At this, the eldest sister laughed, “Squahamish didn’t have a Chinese restaurant?”

“Seeing as we were the only Chinese family in town, then no,” Ellie said. “The nearest one was at Wenatchee, half an hour away, but when my mom was alive, she refused to drive out to eat at a Chinese restaurant, seeing as it was similar food to what we ate at home… And then when she died, our car broke down shortly afterwards.”

The eldest sister and the middle sister just sat there in silence, as if they couldn’t believe that Ellie had pulled the “dead mom” card on them, or worse, as if they were pissed off that she did.

Later that night, Ellie snuck into Jordan’s bedroom—her parents had still given her the guest room—and they lay in bed next to each other. “Your sisters grilled me today,” she said.

Jordan winced. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I hope they didn’t give you too much of a hard time. I don’t know why they have to be so hostile all the time. They’re gonna give my mom a run for her money.”

“It was okay. I held my own,” Ellie said. “But man, am I glad that I don’t have siblings.” She wanted to say more. They had no idea what it was like to not be able to participate in one’s own culture in a way that was not simply borne out of the necessity of everyday life. They had no idea what it was like to be different and have absolutely nobody to commiserate with. And that was not their fault. It was just their luck.

When Jordan had long gone to sleep, Ellie picked up her phone and wrote to Aster, not caring whether she was also sleeping, out there in Boston. Ellie knew she’d reply in the morning. Her message read,  _ Am I ever going to stop feeling unclaimed? _

* * *

“I was thinking about the whole idea of a comfort zone,” Paul said, one winter afternoon, between Christmas and New Year’s. He was sitting on the floor of Ellie’s living room, leaning back against her dad’s recliner. Her dad was shoveling snow out of the parking lot. “Like, why do people keep telling us it’s a good idea to leave it? It’s  _ comfortable _ .”

Ellie, on her own recliner, just hummed in assent.

“When you go to Grinnell, is that getting out of your comfort zone?” Paul asked her.

“At first, I guess.” Ellie shifted in her seat. “Everyone there just seemed like they lived more.”

“How?”

“Like, nothing much happens in Squahamish, so I didn’t go there with the experiences that a lot of them have,” Ellie said.

Paul snorted. “It’s funny how it says, ‘It’s happening in Squahamish.’”

“Yeah. Liars,” Ellie said. “How about you? Do you think moving to Wenatchee was getting outside your comfort zone?”

“Definitely. Going to college, too, but even living alone, like a kinda-grownup, was hard at first,” Paul said. “You know, I had to call my mom to ask her how to work the washer, my first week in Wenatchee. I realised when I got there that I haven’t done my own laundry, ever. I didn’t want to ask the butcher because I didn’t want to seem stupid.”

“The dining hall at Grinnell served couscous my first week there,” Ellie said.

Paul made a face. “What’s that?” He pulled his phone out to Google it.

“ _ Exactly. _ ”

“It’s… tiny little balls of semolina,” Paul said, frowning at his screen.

“Oh, for real? I thought it was grain-based,” Ellie said.

Paul put his phone on the floor. “To be honest, I don’t think I would have even thought of going to Wenatchee if you and me hadn’t become friends,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Well, you were like, the first person who didn’t think I was completely crazy for hawking taco sausage,” Paul said.

“Technically, my dad tried it first,” Ellie said.

“You guys pushed me out of my comfort zone, then,” Paul said.

“We both pushed each other.”

“Oh yeah?” Paul raised an eyebrow. “How did I get you outta yours?”

Ellie smiled at him. Where would she even begin?

* * *

Ellie was turning twenty-one in the spring and she had never been to a New Year’s Eve party. She has had her share of parties by now in college, but Squahamish was different. She had caught wind of parties that were happening, but she wasn’t exactly feeling up to ringing in the new year with people from high school.

Paul had been roped into a party with his old football buddies, and had tried to invite Ellie along but she declined. Instead, she stayed in with her dad, while keeping up with messages from her college friends from all over the country as they celebrated.

She decided to attempt replicating her mom’s Thanksgiving feast for her and her dad. The recipes for the individual components were easy enough to find online. She started with the chicken in the convection oven, and then with the soup broth simmering on the stove. The rice was straightforward enough in the rice cooker, and it wasn’t too difficult to get everything on the pan for the bok choy. Soon enough, dinner was ready. She served everything on their tiny dining table, which usually went unused as it was often covered in paperwork.

She looked at the fruits of her labour. She had never cooked anything quite as intensive before. They had such a limited diet since her mom died; it was a miracle neither of them got scurvy. She began thinking of ideas for a new essay.

Her dad looked impressed, if not touched. “It’s not Thanksgiving?”

“It’s not  _ our  _ New Year either,” Ellie shot back.

They sat down. They served themselves. They ate quietly, because that was their way. The chicken was a little dry, and the bok choy had lost its colour sometime during the cooking process, but Ellie didn’t care about that, because she saw the way her dad smiled when he took his first spoonful of soup.

* * *

Ellie had cooked for more than what two people could eat, so she packed up the leftovers, expecting to be making some fried rice with the chicken and the rice, and eating it with what was left of the soup. When she and her dad had finished cleaning up in the kitchen, he settled in to watch TV while Ellie went to her room. She saw that she had quite a few unread messages on her phone, and then a missed call from Aster.

She ignored the messages from Paul, Jordan, Ava and her other Grinnell friends and tapped immediately on her message thread from Aster.

_ Can I come over? _

_ I’m parked at the high school. I’ll come to your place if you say it’s okay.  _

_ If not, I’ll go to Wenatchee. I know where Paul hides his spare key. _

Alarmed, Ellie called Aster, relieved when she picked up right away. “Are you all right?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

Aster, again, asked if she could come over.

“Sure,” Ellie said.

Soon afterwards, Aster’s yellow hatchback was parked outside the station. Ellie met Aster downstairs, and after an awkward hi to Ellie’s dad, they went inside her room. She shut the door behind them. Aster, comfortable with the environment, sat on Ellie’s bed. Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her jacket, and her face looked ashen.

“Is everything okay?” Ellie asked.

“When I leave for Boston, I don’t think I’m coming back here again,” Aster said.

“How come?”

“I told my family about my girlfriend.”

The words made Ellie’s stomach drop. “Girlfriend?”  _ She  _ didn’t know that Aster had one, or that she was inclined on having one.

“My girlfriend, Sam. She lives in Boston, and I care about her a lot and I thought my family here should finally learn about her. I wanted to show them that part of my life, since I’m so far away most of the year.” Aster took her left hand out of her pocket and raked it through her hair. “ _ God _ . What a mistake.”

“Did they…” Ellie swallowed. “Did they kick you out?”

“No, it’s even worse,” Aster said. “My parents said they felt sorry for me, and that they were going to look into bringing me closer to home. They recommended I take a year off here before transferring colleges. They said I put myself in harm’s way.”

“Oh.”

Aster sighed. It was interesting to Ellie, how she managed to look furious rather than devastated. “It was just so condescending, you know? They’re not making an effort to understand me or accept me, but they’re just  _ pretending  _ to, under the guise of all this,” she waved in the air, “bullshit.” She huffed at Ellie’s widened eyes. “I mean, I expected my dad to start preaching and going on about Satan, but I didn’t expect this fake pity.”

“Your mom didn’t take your side?” Ellie didn’t know much about Mrs Flores, except that she was an attentive mother and a dutiful wife.

“My mom never takes my side,” Aster said. “I had to get out of there. I packed all my stuff up and threw it in the car. They didn’t even stop me.”

“Why do you think they didn’t do that?”

“I think they’d thought I’d come back, that I would miss them too much,” Aster said. “They didn’t let me say goodbye to my sister, though. They told her to go to her room and she just stayed there. She was always the more obedient one.”

Ellie didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry, Aster.” When Aster didn’t respond, she continued talking, “Why don’t you get your stuff from your car? You can stay here with us until you need to go back to Boston.”

“Are you sure?” Aster asked.

“Better here than Paul’s bachelor pad, I think,” Ellie said, making a show of wrinkling her nose.

Aster chuckled softly. “All right. Thank you, Ellie.” She left Ellie’s room to go back downstairs. When she returned, minutes later, carrying her bags, she looked calmer. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

Ellie was sitting on her bed. “For what?”

“For not telling you about Sam. I don’t know why I put it off. I didn’t mean to hide things from you,” Aster said.

Ellie was curious about why Aster hid this piece of information from her, but she understood that that was not a conversation to have for that night. “That’s okay. We can talk about it another time, honestly. It’s New Year’s Eve,” she said. “What do you normally do?”

“I watch the delayed footage of the ball drop on YouTube,” Aster said.

Ellie opened her laptop and scooted over on the bed, so Aster could join her. “Then let’s do that.”


End file.
